0

I truly don't understand why passive voice is considered almost inherently bad writing. Secondly, unless the sentence is quite brief I can hardly tell whether a sentence is passive or active. Is there a trick, or can someone explain it to me? When editing essays, I find that I'll learn that I missed passive voice usage because the longer the sentence, and the further into the essay it goes, I lose track.

Whom is also complicated for me and I'm not sure why. I know the simple versions 'of whom' and 'with whom', but, again, I lose track of what is being modified by what in a longer sentence. How can I go about understanding 'whom' and modifications in sentence structure?

stampedunder
  • 324
  • 2
    Here's Geoffrey Pullum's explanation of the passive voice: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2922 Most sensible and informed people do not consider the passive voice to be inherently bad writing. – herisson Sep 19 '16 at 03:26
  • This site's main question about using "whom" is here: What’s the rule for using “who” and “whom” correctly? There are also a number of other questions about this subject that can be found under the tag "whom." – herisson Sep 19 '16 at 03:27
  • The first is very good information and the second I'll be sure to search for. – stampedunder Sep 19 '16 at 03:30
  • 2
    I've voted to close this question as too broad. I think it's too broad for a few reasons: it's a two-part question, it asks about general subjects that have already been covered here (so it's hard to tell what kind of answer would be useful) and it is fairly vague. I hope the links will be helpful; maybe you will have more specific questions after reading the linked material that would fit better with the Q&A format of this site. – herisson Sep 19 '16 at 03:33

1 Answers1

1

No, the passive is not inherently bad writing. That's a myth started by E.B White. It has a purpose and should be used when it is needed. In a passive sentence like:

"Rock star Keith Richards was arrested yesterday on drug charges".

Do we need to know what no-name authority arrested Keith Richards? That would be bad journalism if it were put in the active voice because who arrested Keith Richards is not important.

"Whom" is a relative pronoun that replaces the grammatical object in relative clauses. So if I wanted to turn the sentence "I met that man yesterday" into a relative clause, whom would replace "that man", becoming "I met whom yesterday". The pronoun then comes to the front of the clause, becoming "whom I met yesterday", which then can be used in some other sentence to describe the same man.

The man whom I met yesterday gave me good advice.

Hope that helps.

aparente001
  • 21,530
William
  • 1,728