Ask, who’s doing the verb?
How can you identify and activate the passive voice?
Active voice
The active voice uses simple sentence structure:
Subject, verb, object.
Man bites dog.
Passive voice
Invert that simple sentence structure, and you’ve got the passive voice:
Object, verb, subject.
Dog is bitten by man.
Passive voice, agent deleted
Sometimes we drop the subject altogether:
Object, verb.
Dog is bitten.
Activate the passive voice
To activate the passive voice, remember: Every sentence needs a subject and a verb, and the subject should be doing the verb.
So find the verb:
bites
Figure out who’s doing the verb:
man
Put that person in front of the verb:
Man bites dog.
What words will resonate with your readers?
Jargon. Buzzwords. Acronyms. They’re things that make your reader go “huh?” And we need to get them out of our message.
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