Passive Voice What is Passive Voice How to Improve it with Examples

Passive Voice What is Passive Voice How to Improve it with Examples Passive Voice: What Is Passive Voice How to Improve It with Examples Passive voice has its purposes. It really does. In fact, it can be the politically correct way to phrase something.Imagine†¦The setting: a public school libraryThe players: a librarian (OK, I’m the librarian) and 15 first gradersThe scene: The librarian is reading aloud nonfiction books about sharks.The question: â€Å"Why do sharks _______________?† (some intriguing behavior too complex or gory for me to explain or possibly even understand)The passive voice answer that keeps me employed in a public school: â€Å"That’s the way they were made.†The active voice answer that I would tell my grandchildren: â€Å"God made them that way.†Heres what youll learn about passive voice:What is passive voice?How much passive voice can you use?How to choose to use passive or active voiceActive voice examplesHow to vary your sentence varietyHow to find your percent of passive voiceNOTE: We cover everything in this blog post and much more about the writing, ma rketing, and publishing process in our VIP Selfs:ACTIVE: I love reading.PASSIVE: Reading is loved by me.ACTIVE: AC/DC Thunder won the game easily.PASSIVE: The game was won easily by AC/DC Thunder.With students, the focus is on active voice; with a professional writer like yourself, you will most likely have a blend of both active and passive sentences, but active should still far outweigh passive.Active VS Passive Voice with ExamplesFrom Billboards â€Å"The Biggest Hits of All: The Hot 100s All-Time Top 100 Songs† I selected songs that used active voice in their titles. (WHO selected them? I selected them. That’s another easy example of active voice.)Here are song titles along with a rewrite in passive voice:â€Å"I Love Rock ‘N Roll† * Rock ‘N Roll Is Loved by Meâ€Å"I Gotta Feeling† * A Feeling Was Gotten by Meâ€Å"You Light Up My Life† * My Life Was Lit Up by You†Ã¢â‚¬Å"We Found Love† * Love Was Found by Usâ€Å"I Wan t to Hold Your Hand† * Your Hand Is What I Want to Holdâ€Å"Another One Bites the Dust† * The Dust Was Bitten by Another Oneâ€Å"I Will Always Love You† * You Will Always Be Loved by Meâ€Å"I Heard It Through the Grapevine† * It Was Heard Through the Grapevine by MeSentences with the understood subject (you) have an imperative active voice which is much more authoritative than passive tense:(You)† Un-Break My Heart† * My Heart Should Be Unbroken by You(You) â€Å"Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree† * A Yellow Ribbon Should Be Tied Round the Ole Oak Tree by You(You) â€Å"Let the Sunshine In† * The Sunshine Should Be Let In by You(You) â€Å"Play That Funky Music† * That Funky Music Should Be Played by YouConversely, this next song title has a passive voice that works: â€Å"That’s What Friends Are For† (better than Friends Are for That).With the rewrites changing active voice to passive, did you dis cern a pattern where many of them ended with a prepositional phrase containing the person doing the action?Think of gossip. People want to know who is doing what! (They really did that? You’re kidding!) Put the subject right at the beginning so everyone knows whom you’re talking (writing) about and what they did!How to Vary Your Sentence Variety Using Passive Voice and Active VoiceIf you have the same subject over and over and if the object is more of the point anyway, passive voice allows for sentence variety.Furthermore, if it doesn’t matter who did the action because the result is the point, passive voice works.The chairs in the old high school library were refinished and moved to the new library weeks before the tables were moved. Temporary chairs were in the high school library. I needed the tables from the old elementary library to sort the genre boxes, so students had chairs, but no tables for a while. The elementary students enjoyed sitting at the  "invisible† tables and joked how they didn’t have to push in their chairs when they left.After class, a first grader told his teacher very sincerely, â€Å"The tables really are invisible!†I smile whenever I think of his endearing comment.Passive voice rationale: It didn’t matter who had refinished and moved the chairs or who had put temporary chairs in the high school library. I hadn’t done those things, and those details would not have added to the book. Nonetheless, I had completed the genrefication project (where the library was totally reorganized by book genres). I didn’t want to start almost every sentence with â€Å"I + action verb + direct object.† It would sound awkward to repeatedly start sentences with â€Å"I did this, I did that, I, I, I†¦.†Passive Voice Checker How to Determine Your Percent of Passive VoiceBeyond the basic spelling and grammar check (which can be helpful with tools like Grammarly or even Hem ingway Editor) is Word’s readability feature.It tells you various details about your writing, including the percentage of passive sentences, the Flesch Reading Ease, and the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level. For example, the segment about the chairs and the invisible tables scored an 8.8 Flesh-Kincaid Grade Level, which means it was written at a reading level where an 8th grader in the 8th month of school should be able to comprehend the text.Many teen and adult fiction books are written at 4th 6th-grade reading levels (based on Accelerated Reader scoring) because the writing flows at those levels for recreational reading compared to reading to learn new information. Newspapers may rank more at a 10th-grade reading level, depending on the complexity of the information.If you are using Word and would like to know your percentage of passive sentences and readability scores, here’s what you do:Go to Review at the top of Word.Select Spelling Grammar from the top left.Select Op tions from the pop-up.Select Settings at the bottom of the next pop up (next to Writing style:)Then scroll down until you see Passive Voice and check the boxSelect OK and youll now be able to check your passive voice in WordIn case you were wondering (and even if you weren’t), this article was written at a 6.7 reading level with 6% sentences being passive.Now check some of your writing and see if you agree with your results. By the way, I just took my own advice here and checked my children’s picture book, The Flower Fairies Meet the Talking Rainbow Rocks. It contains 4% passive sentences (acceptable to me) but has a 4.1 reading level, which is higher than I would have guessed and higher than I had planned for a picture book.My book’s science-related terms increased the reading level. Word’s readability tool actively helps with various writing considerations beyond passive voice. You may use it purely for passive voice, but it will tell you even more.Acti ve writing is lively writing. It is aggressive in the most positive sense. It burrows in there and zooms straight to the point. Stay active with your writing, and stay active in your writing.Are you ready to write a bestseller?Together we can take your writing up a notch and you can self-publish a book that becomes the next bestseller!

Definition of Commonplace in Rhetoric

Definition of Commonplace in Rhetoric The term commonplace has multiple meanings in rhetoric: Classical Rhetoric 1. In classical rhetoric, a commonplace is a statement or bit of knowledge that is commonly shared by members of an audience or a community.   Meaning of Commonplace in Rhetoric 2. A commonplace is an elementary rhetorical exercise, one of the progymnasmata. (See What Are the Progymnasmata?) 3. In invention, commonplace is another term for a common topic. Also known as  topoi (in Greek) and   loci (in Latin).Also see: Commonplace BookEnthymemeTopoiTopic Commonplace Examples and Observations Life holds one great but quite commonplace mystery. Though shared by each of us and known to all, it seldom rates a second thought. That mystery, which most of us take for granted and never think twice about, is time.(Michael Ende, Momo. Doubleday, 1985)[In John Miltons Paradise Lost, the devils] speech to the deities of the void is a deliberative oration; he seeks to persuade them to give him information he needs by pleading the advantage his mission will bring them. He bases his argument on the commonplace of regal power and imperial jurisdiction, promising to expel All usurpation from the new-created world and to re-erect there the Standard . . . of ancient Night.(John M. Steadman, Miltons Epic Characters. University of North Carolina Press, 1968) Aristotle on Commonplaces - The commonplaces or topics are locations of standard categories of arguments. Aristotle distinguishes four common topics: whether a thing has occurred, whether it will occur, whether things are bigger or smaller than they seem, and whether a thing is or is not possible. Other commonplaces are definition, comparison, relationship, and testimony, each with its own subtopics. . . . In the Rhetoric, in Books I and II, Aristotle talks about not only common topics that can generate arguments for any kind of speech, but also special topics that are useful only for a particular kind of speech or subject matter. Because the discussion is dispersed, it is sometimes hard to determine what each kind of topic is. (Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg, The Rhetorical Tradition. Bedford, 2001) - [A]ccording to [Aristotle], the characteristically rhetorical statement involves commonplaces that lie outside any scientific specialty; and in proportion as the rhetorician deals with special subject matter, his proofs move away from the rhetorical and toward the scientific. (For instance, a typical rhetorical commonplace, in the Aristotelian sense, would be Churchills slogan, Too little and too late, which could hardly be said to fall under any special science of quantity or time.)(Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives, 1950. University of California Press, 1969) The Challenge of Recognizing Commonplaces To detect a rhetorical commonplace, the scholar must generally rely on empirical evidence: that is, the collecting and evaluating of related lexical and thematic elements in the texts of other authors. Such components, however, are often hidden by oratorical embellishments or historiographical dexterity. (Francesca Santoro LHoir, Tragedy, Rhetoric, and the Historiography of Tacitus Annales. University of Michigan Press, 2006) Classical Exercise Commonplace. This is an exercise that expands on the moral qualities of some virtue or vice, often as exemplified in some common phrase of advice. The writer in this assignment must seek through his or her knowledge and reading for examples that will amplify and illustrate the sentiments of the commonplace, proving it, supporting it, or showing its precepts in action. This is a very typical assignment from the Greek and Roman world in that it assumes a considerable store of cultural knowledge. Here are several commonplaces that might be amplified: a. An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.b. You always admire what you really dont understand.c. One cool judgment is worth a thousand hasty counsels.d. Ambition is the last infirmity of noble minds.e. The nation that forgets its defenders will be itself forgotten.f. Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.g. As the twig is bent, so grows the tree.h. The pen is mightier than the sword.(Edward P.J. Corbett and Robert J. Connors, Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student, 4th ed. Oxford University Press, 1999) Jokes and Commonplaces With some hermetic jokes what is required is not knowledge, or belief, in the first instance, but an awareness of what might be called commonplaces. A young Catholic woman told her friend, I told my husband to buy all the Viagra he can find.Her Jewish friend replied, I told my husband to buy all the stock in Pfizer he can find. It is not required that the audience (or the teller) actually believe that Jewish women are more interested in money than in sex, but he must be acquainted with this idea. When jokes play upon commonplaceswhich may or may not be believedthey often do it by exaggeration. Typical examples are clergymen jokes. For instance, After knowing one another for a long time, three clergymenone Catholic, one Jewish, and one Episcopalianhave become good friends. When they are together one day, the Catholic priest is in a sober, reflective mood, and he says, Id like to confess to you that although I have done my best to keep my faith, I have occasionally lapsed, and even since my seminary days I have, not often, but sometimes, succumbed and sought carnal knowledge.Ah well, says the rabbi, It is good to admit these things, and so I will tell you that, not often, but sometimes, I break the dietary laws and eat forbidden food.At this the Episcopalian priest, his face reddening, says, If only I had so little to be ashamed of. You know, only last week I caught myself eating a main course with my salad fork.​  (Ted Cohen, Jokes: Philosophical Thoughts on Joking Matters. The University of Chicago Press, 1999) Etymology  From the Latin, generally applicable literary passage Also see: AdageAphorismArgumentationDiscourse CommunityMaximPlatitudeProverbSententia Pronunciation: KOM-un-plase