A good time was had by all

The title of this post is an example of the passive voice. Before you proceed, please read the University Writing Center’s post on active and passive voice.

You might want to read it again. Make sure you understand the difference between active and passive voice. Talk to Rebecca or me if you do not.

I will reiterate here the key advice of the Writing Center’s post: Do not use the passive voice unless you have a good reason.

Now for the good news: I kept track of the use of passive voice in the Doe assignments we are returning to you this week. The magenta highlighting in your paper tracks each instance of passive voice that I saw. (Your use of passive voice in no way affected your grade.) Every student but one used the passive voice between eight and twelve times in that assignment, which is not an excessive amount. (One particularly ‘active’ writer used it only five times.) You should not use it as much as you did, but many years we have students who use the passive voice in every other sentence.

As you proofread the closed office memos you will turn in tomorrow night or early Wednesday, try to identify instances of the passive voice, and remove them unless you have a good reason for keeping them. Note that Microsoft Word provides a grammar-checking tool that will identify most instances of the passive voice for you. Microsoft has published instructions and frequently asked questions for use of the function.

-Brian