I am a university student. I submitted an essay and a professor told me I should avoid passive voice with examples. But some of those examples sounded weird to me. When I asked the professor about this, she sent me a reply as following:
Everyone is having [CH1] a hard time.
[CH1]Passive voice – try to avoid if possible. Rephrase to activeThis is a complete sentence, but it is passive voice, because it combines a variant of the verb "to be" with another verb, in this case "is" + the verb "have".
So, you could make this more active by re-writing like so: Everyone has experienced a hard time. -or- Everyone has had a hard time.
Notice how the verb "to be" has been eliminated from this sentence.
Arendt also mentioned that he had no motives at all, but never realized what he was doing[CH1] , although it is still controversial if he really did not know what he was doing apart from no evil intention.
[CH1]PV"was doing" is passive, because it mixes "was" + the verb "to do". You can rewrite to active llike so:
Arendt also mentioned that had no motives at all, but never realized what he had done, although controversy persists over whether he really did not know what he had done. Lankford (2009), however, argues that brutal behavior expressed by the soldiers is not [CH1] from their dispositions, but it is the result of systematic and situational factors. [CH1]Passive – can you rewrite to active?
Here, it's not technically passive voice, but the use of the verb "is" here is a bit weak. You can rewrite and make it more interesting by eliminating the verb "is": Lankford, however, argues that brutal behavior expressed by the soldiers derives not from their dispositions, but results from systematic and situational factors.
Isn't passive voice be + p.p.? I thought be + -ing was active voice. Is there something I don't know about passive voice? Should I avoid using to be verb in essay regardless of active or passive voice?