What does active voice mean?

Question

I was reading on here about passive voice but didn't really know what active voice was. I read some examples but was hoping for more insight. What does it mean to write with the active voice?

Answer 1

Easiest way to remember is active voice is NOW. Passive voice is past...something that happened in the past.

Answer 2

Active voice is to help make the overall meaning of your sentence clear for your audience and to keep the sentence from being too complicated or wordy sounding.

What it means by active voice is that you are going to have the action performed in the sentence by the subject. You are telling what a person or thing is going to be doing.

1. In the active voice, the subject is going to be performing the action (verb) and will typically be listed in the sentence before the action.
2. The object is who or what receives the action and will typically appear in the sentence after the action (verb).

In contrast, the passive voice is when you are telling what is done to someone or something.

1. The subject performs the action and will typically appear in the sentence after the action (verb).
2. The object is who or what receives the action and is usually going to come before the action (verb).

With the majority of your sentences, you will easily be able to rearrange parts of your sentence around to change from passive to active.

In the following examples, I will show you passive and active voice to help you see the difference.

Example 1:

Active: Harry (subject) ate (verb) six shrimp (object) at dinner. [This tells the action of Harry eating the shrimp]

Passive :At dinner, six shrimp (object) were (verb) eaten by Harry (subject). [This is showing what happened at dinner, not by the subject of Harry]

Example 2:

Active: Tom (subject) will finish (verb) his project (object) by tomorrow.

Passive: The project (object) will be finished (verb) by Tom (subject) tomorrow.

Example 3:

Active: Susan will bake two dozen cupcakes for the bake sale.

Passive: For the bake sale, two dozen cookies will be baked by Susan.

Example 4:

Active: The team will celebrate their victory tomorrow.

Passive: The victory will be celebrated by the team tomorrow.

Example 5:

Active: She emailed her application for a new job.

Passive: The application for a new job was emailed by her.

Hope this helps!!