In his Plain English for Lawyers (5th Ed.), Richard Wydick calls this sort of construction the “truncated passive.” Here’s his example: The ball was kicked. With passive voice, the writer can obscure the identity of the actor. With active voice, the reader can tell who is doing what. Moreover, use of passive verbs often creates ambiguity. Passive voice is wordier than active voice. In the examples above, the sentence in the passive voice includes two additional words, was and by. Using active verbs makes your writing livelier, as well as more concise, and more readable. Passive: The moon was jumped over by the cow. Instead, the subject is acted upon, or as legal writing expert Bryan Garner says, in passive voice, the writer “back into the sentence.” In passive voice, the subject does not perform the action of the verb. In active voice, the subject of the clause or sentence does the acting. What is the difference between the passive and active voice in writing?
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