"Passive"

[feuervogel]

Can I just say that I'm right tired of people saying that any instance of "to be" as a linking verb (eg, the pen was green) is passive? Because, seriously, it isn't.

It may be uninteresting writing; it may be lazy writing; it may be writing that isn't descriptive. But it sure as sugar isn't passive. That term has a specific meaning in English grammar, and that meaning does not include "every usage of forms of "to be" ever."

Mistakes were made. [This sentence is in passive voice, because the actor, ie, who made the mistake, is not specified.]
He made a mistake. [This sentence is in the active voice, because the actor is specified.]
Going hiking in the mountains without a warm jacket was a mistake. [This is absolutely not a sentence in the passive voice. "Was" here links the two nouns/noun phrases [going hiking etc] and [a mistake] and equates them. It is a linking verb. It is not passive voice.]

Please count all the instances of "to be" as a linking verb in this post. There are fifteen, by my count, not including the example sentence. If you think they need to be rewritten to be "not passive," please make suggestions on how to do that without making it overwritten garbage.

Comments

[legionseagle]

This sounds like one of my rants from my writing critique group.

Have you had the "verbs incorporating any part of the verb 'to be" are passive" idiocy yet? Such as "The cat was eating the salmon which had been in the fridge" being marked as containing two passive verbs?

[feuervogel]

Yes! And the advice would be, like, "rethink your verb choices." OK, "The cat ate the salmon which I had taken out of the fridge." OK, there are no forms of 'to be' in that sentence, but it's not inherently superior to the original, and, depending on the context, the former may have been *better*! Because "was eating" and "ate" aren't the same tense, despite being both past tenses.

I should just link the English page when people are uninformed gits about grammar.

[legionseagle]

You look at a poem like Auden's Musee de Beaux Arts and realise that people who have that "simple past is the only option" have no idea why that poem works and what it's about - the layered effect of foreground and background done in words by tenses.

[miome]

Some folks skipped that day of grammar I guess.

There's only one I would re-write, and that wouldn't be for passive voice but to get the most important part of the sentence up front. "It was a mistake to go hiking in the mountains without a warm jacket". Depending on context, though, the other version could be better.

[feuervogel]

These same people would ding that rewrite as "passive" as well, because "it was" is "passive."

Yeah, I have no idea what they learned in school...

[kaasirpent]

I get this all the time in one of my critique groups. Every time I use 'was' someone marks it as passive. Every time I use an 'ing' verb, someone says I'm using too many gerunds.

I just ignore them and make a mental note not to take too much they ever say about grammar seriously. :)

[feuervogel]

If you think it would help, http://englishpage.com/verbpage/verbtenseintro.html is really useful. It's for ESL students, but it explains things very nicely for native speakers who didn't get a very good grammar education.

[beth_leonard]

You might like to point them to 50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice.
--Beth