Page 4 - 8.2 MODULE-ACTIVE AND PASSIVE VOICE

and necessitated the preposition by. In fact, all three of the transformed

sentences above required the addition of by.

When to use active and passive voice:
Using the active voice conveys a strong, clear tone and the passive
voice is subtler and weaker. Here’s some good advice: don’t use the
passive voice just because you think it sounds a bit fancier than the
active voice.
That said, there are times the passive voice is useful and called for.
Take “The squirrel was chased by the dog,” for example. That sentence
construction would be helpful if the squirrel were the focus of your writing
and not the dog.

A good rule of thumb is to try to put the majority of your sentences in the
active voice, unless you truly can’t write your sentence in any other way.

• The Active Voice is used when the agent (i.e., doer of the action )
is to be made prominent ;

• The Passive Voice is used when the person or thing acted upon is
to be made prominent. The Passive is , therefore, generally
preferred when the active form would involve the use of an
indefinite or vague pronoun or noun (somebody ,people, we, they
etc.) as subject ; that is ,when we do not know the agent or when it
is clear enough who the agent is.

Example:

1. I have been invited to the party.(Someone has invited me to the
party.)

2. All orders will be executed promptly.(We will execute all orders
promptly.)

3. I was asked my identity. (They asked me my identity.)

In such cases the agent with by is usually avoided.