Since Quora likes to collapse my answers in an effort to keep me quiet, I’m copying and pasting some of the Quora Q and A’s in which I’ve participated. Here’s a question from Quora.

Question: What is the passive voice of this sentence?

Addendum: Nobody writes a letter.

Answer: A letter is written by nobody.

What is passive voice, though? Many people have no clue. They’ve certainly heard the term, but fail to recognize what it is and why it can damage a story. A new writer may want to hire a competent editor in order to check for passive writing.

You can read through this page of about.com in order to learn the complexities of passive writing, but here’s the simple answer.

In traditional grammar, the term passive voice refers to a type of sentence or clause in which the subject receives the action of the verb. For example: A good time was had by all.

Contrast with active voice;  an example is: Everyone had a good time.

In the above example, the subject actively participates in the verb.

Here’s another example: The milk was spilled by the dog.

That’s passive because the dog is the one spilling the milk, but the focus has been placed on the result rather than the action.

The active version is: The dog spilled the milk.

Style guides discourage use of passive writing because when prose is consistently written passively, the audience feels kept away from the characters, the actors, the world, and the story.

Think of it this way:

A new movie has come out. You’re dying to see it, but your kid has soccer practice. When you come home, you get a phone call. Your friend tells you they saw the movie, and you’re so envious, you demand your friend tells you the whole movie from start to finish.

Even if your friend breaks down every detail, you won’t see the lights or shadows, you won’t hear the music, or the sounds, or the tones of voice. No matter how great a raconteur your friend is, they can’t possibly provide you the same experience because they won’t tell you how Tom Cruise scrunched his face, or bit his lip, or looked off into the distance to provide the emotion, the turmoil, the joy, etc.

You are kept at arm’s length, and that’s certainly fine if you’re chatting with friends, but if you bought a book, don’t you want to be immersed in the story? If you’re a writer, and you’ve written and published a book, and are charging for its purchase, don’t you think the readers–who have spent their money on your book and paid you–want to be immersed in your story? Don’t keep them at arm’s length with weak writing.

Hire an editor.

You can learn more about proper writing by visiting this Quora blog.

You can also visit my Editing Services tab for more information.