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Abusing the Passive

Your order is being processed

The passive voice has a bad name in writing for a couple of reasons. For one, it introduces the relatively puny (though hard-working) verb be--that is, sentence (1) seems more forceful than either sentence (2) or sentence (3):

(1) The referees robbed us.
(2) We were robbed by the referees.
(3) We were robbed.

A more serious problem with the passive is that it allows us to say something happened without saying who did it, eliminating the subject of the equivalent active sentence. Sometimes this simply loses information; sometimes it is evasive prose. Sentence (3) above, for example, expresses our sense of grievance without having the guts to come out and say that we mean the referees. The absence of overt agents is particularly common in bureaucratic prose (both government and business), where it allows a total evasion of individual responsibility, leading to committee minutes full of It was noted that, it has been reported that, it was decided that and the like.

When, then, should one use the passive? It is always appropriate to use the passive when one sincerely does not know the agent. If someone breaks into our house, for example, sentence (3) is perfectly OK, without adding "by someone" to make it clear that we don't know who did it. It is also appropriate to use the passive for a clearer transition; if you've been talking about "us" for several sentences, either sentence (2) or sentence (3) avoids shifting the focus.

In addition, one needs to follow the rule of "When in Rome, do as Romans do." In particular, remember that the modern university is just another bureaucracy, and that academic writing is bureaucratic writing. The use of the first-person "I" is taboo in many forms of academic writing. This will often force one to use the passive (and other awkward structures)--e.g., "The subjects were asked." Hold your nose and comply.

The Get-Passive. Be is not the only over-worked verb in English. Get also has multiple uses, one of which is as a quasi-auxiliary forming the passive in place of be:

(4) We got robbed by the referees.
The get-passive still sounds a bit colloquial and should be avoided in formal writing. As with the kept-progessive, the quasi-auxiliary get cannot participate in INVERSION, so that questions must be formed with DO-Insertion. Sentences (5) and (7) below are acceptable, but sentence (6) is not:
(5) Were we robbed by the referees?
(6) *Got we robbed by the referees?
(7) Did we get robbed by the referees?

Exercise 1

Adding in sentences with get further complicates the task of identifying passive structures. Which of the following sentences are in passive voice? Watch out for other uses of be and get and for cases where a past participle is preceded by have rather than be or get:
1.01 My goodness, Tara can have been ignored by all those nurses.
1.02 The last engineer must have cuddled Batman.
1.03 Has its novelist been grinning?
1.04 Are the altos being robbed by the ghosts?
1.05 Would you get the screwdriver for me?
1.06 Henry was given a kiss by the only good-looking chorus girl.
1.07 He did not get thanks by the vampires.
1.08 George is always winking at Martha.
1.09 I've been spied on again.
1.10 I was drunk last night.

The Progressive Passive. We have so far dealt with the various uses of be separately, but they can be combined. When one has two or more auxiliary verbs, the tense is shown by the first. In the progressive passive, the marker for the progressive comes first, showing the tense, and is followed by being. Even though being is a present participle, it still counts as a form of be in forming the passive, so that if it is followed by a past participle one has the progressive passive. Sentence (8) is past progressive passive, and sentence (9) is present progressive passive, with the tense of the first auxiliary being what counts:

(8) We were being robbed by the referees.
(9) Your order is being processed.

When revising away the passive voice, try not to change the tense or to lose the progressive aspect when converting such sentences to the active equivalents:

(10) The referees were robbing us.
(11) Someone is processing your order.

A phrase structure tree for the progressive passive simply nests one case in which a verb takes a verb phrase as its complement inside another. As we add in other kinds of auxiliaries, they would be handled in the same way. Anytime one has more than two auxiliary verbs, however, one should ask oneself whether there isn't some better way of expressing the same thought. Long sequences of verbs can be hard on the reader.

How Much of This Will be on the Test?
The bulk of this section has been devoted to identifying misuses of the passive which might call for revision. You should also now be able to identify a get-passive and the present progressive passive and past progressive passive.