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   Mignon Fogarty (grammargirl@zirk.us)'s status on Thursday, 20-Mar-2025 10:06:55 JST Mignon Fogarty

   You've probably been told you should write in active voice, but do you know why? And do you know how to identify it?

   Active voice puts the person or thing doing something front and center — and that actually improves reading comprehension. If you want people to understand what you're writing (and who doesn't?), active voice helps!

   A great trick for testing if a sentence is in passive voice is to see if you can add "by zombies" to the end ... 🧵

   #Writing #Grammar

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     Mignon Fogarty (grammargirl@zirk.us)'s status on Thursday, 20-Mar-2025 10:06:53 JST Mignon Fogarty

     in reply to

     Passive voice isn't *always* the wrong choice though.

     It's good when you don't know who did something or want to deemphasize who did something:

     The cookies were stolen last night. [We don't know who did it.'

     The cells were launched into space this morning. [This wording suggests that the cells going is more important than who did the launching.]

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     Mignon Fogarty (grammargirl@zirk.us)'s status on Thursday, 20-Mar-2025 10:06:54 JST Mignon Fogarty

     in reply to

     If you can add "by zombies," you probably have a passive voice sentence that you should rewrite with those "zombies" front and center.

     Here's an example:

     ❌ The dogs were walked [by zombies].
     ✅ Zombies walked the dogs.

     Here's a more real-life example:

     ❌ The report was sent Friday [by accounting].
     ✅ Accounting sent the report Friday.

     (And I in no way mean to imply that accounting is full of zombies! 🤣)

     Lia🦩 repeated this.