Are the following passive sentences correct ? and if yes what are the active versions of each, please? thanks in advance.


- He was intended to be hired.

- He was arranged to be hired.

- A new hospital has been decided to be built.

- She was arranged to work as a secretary.

- It is intended that he be killed.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Rachel, Moderator,

The sentences are fine by me except the fifth one.It should be something like this: It is intended that he must be killed.
The active for each is as follows:
1. They intended to hire him.
2. They arranged to hire him.
3. The government (or whoever) has decided to build a new hospital.
4. They arranged that she should work as a secretary.
5. They intend to kill him.

Well, they're not fine by me. Sorry, Mido.

The passive voice is not meant to be used willy-nilly in any possible sentence just because the verb is transitive and can be put in that form. Nope, that's not what the passive voice is meant for.

None of those sentences sounds natural, not to mention the fact that they're incredible awkward. In addition, some aren't even grammatical.

- He was intended to be hired.
This is awful. Since he is really the direct object of intend, let's keep it that way: They(?) intended to hire him.

- He was arranged to be hired.
This is illogical. You cannot "arrange a person." The sentence should be It was arranged that he (should) be hired. I'm using anticipatory it, which anticipates his being hired. I'm also giving you the option to use the modal auxiliary should or the mandative subjunctive (that he be hired).

- A new hospital has been decided to be built.
Another illogical and ungrammatical sentence. Anticipatory it works fine here, too: It has been decided that a new hospital (should) be built.

- She was arranged to work as a secretary.
Once again, you cannot "arrange a person." It was arranged that she work as a secretary.

- It is intended that he be killed. Although this is grammatically possible, it's very awkward and quite unnatural sounding. It would be much better to say something like They(?) intended for him to be killed if they were going to hire somebody to do the job. The sentence might also be They(?) intended to kill him, which gives us the impression they were going to do it themselves.

As I said at the start, even though a sentence can be changed from the active to the passive voice because the verb is transitive, that doesn't mean we freely do so willy-nilly. There are certain reasons for using the passive voice instead of the active voice.

This is the best explanation I have ever had regarding these sentences in particular, Richard you are the best teacher
By the way Richard, shouldn't you have said:
(Incridibly awkward) instead of (incridible awkward)? in:

None of those sentences sounds natural, not to mention the fact that they're (incredible awkward).

This message has been edited. Last edited by: tonyjab,

What an iluminating reply.

Thanks a lot.

quote:

There are certain reasons for using the passive voice instead of the active voice.

Please list all the reasons for using the passive voice instead of the active voice.

I'm really glad you like my explanation, Tonyjab, and thanks for the compliment!

To answer your question, when one adjective (incredible) is used to modify another adjective (awkward), that first adjective is turned into an adverb, so incredible + awkward becomes incredibly awkward.

Here are some other examples:

seriously ill / partially responsible / happily married / unusually quiet
________________________________________________

To answer your question, Izzy:

There are two main reasons for using the passive voice.

(1) When the focus is on the object that receives the action and the doer of the action is unimportant in the idea. Because of this, we want to make that object the subject of our sentence, but we need to use the passive voice form to show that the subject is not the doer.

(2) When the speaker/writer doesn't want to divulge the doer of the action for one reason or another.

Thanks a lot, Richard.

When Izzy asked for all the reasons for using the passive, I thought that was a pretty tall order. For sure we'd miss something.

I do have some to add to Richard's, which are the usual answers.

(3) When the speaker/writer doesn't know who the doer of the action is. Try changing this sentence to the passive: President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963.

(4) The passive can be used to make a request that is a bit gentler than a direct request. Your bathrooms need to be cleaned. (Although I find that when I say it that way to my kids they tend to ignore it!)

(5) The passive can be used to make a query or an accusation that is less aggressive than the active voice. Compare these:

Editor to author:
It appears that this paragraph was plagiarized.
It appears that you plagiarized this paragraph.

Wife to husband:
Was the door left unlocked all night?
Did you leave the door unlocked all night?

The passive can sometimes make our human relationships smoother.

I once had an insightful lawyer from Colombia as a student.

He discovered, when we discussed the reasons for the passive voice, that one could avoid responsibility for reporting who did what.

I think this was an excellent discovery. It covers most of the reasons that Richard and Okaasan have stated.

Add to the list:

6.The identity of the agent can be assumed or understood, so it is not necessary to mention the agent.
The thief was arrested.
The mail was delivered to my doorstep.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Abu Hassan,

quote:

The passive voice is not meant to be used willy-nilly in any possible sentence just because the verb is transitive and can be put in that form. Nope, that's not what the passive voice is meant for.

I would like to give Richard a huge round of applause. This is one of my pet peeves. Too many grammar exercises ask students to create passive sentences that would rarely, if ever, be used.

Thanks very much, Amy.

And you're point about those grammar exercises is well taken!

One of my pet peeves is the official avoidance of the passive voice, as seen in many newspapers, and indeed, on our spelling/grammar checkers.

This is so wrong! There are instances in which the passive voice is the voice of choice. For example, how would you best express the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the destruction of the World Trade Center -- having been hit by planes, the election of any president, the invasion of any country, the killing or injuring of any person or persons in an accident...and many other situations. (These situations are all bad news, granted, but that is not one of the criteria.)

On Sundays, my hometown newspaper lists a sampling of the crimes committed during the week. Today there were 27 items, all of them in the active voice! They have been in the active voice for years, ever since a well-intentioned editor decided that the passive voice was bad.

Here are some:

'A burglar ransacked a house...
A burglar took off with seven tires...
A thief went for a bird and a wooden cage...
A burglar stole an ATM with $920 from a building...
A thief took documents...
A burglar stole diamond earrings...
A thief stole a GPS device...'

and on and on.

First, we have to assume that a thief or a burglar did the stealing. But most important is the item that was stolen. This item should be presented first, and then the verb that tells what happened to it.

Does it seem more logical and more accurate to say:

A house was ransacked...

Documents were stolen...

A GPS device was stolen...

I think it does. It's a much better style. Forcing the passive voice here makes the writers and editors seem like amateurs instead of the professional writers that they are supposed to be.

That said, I want to agree with Richard and Amy that we have to be judicious in the use of the passive voice. Indeed we do! But we should also be judicious in the use of the active voice.

Hi Rachael,

I also agree with you about the "official avoidance" of the passive voice. People do tend to get carried away with things like that, don't they?

There are many situations in which the only good choice is the passive. My pet peeve stems from the fact that in my years as an ESL teacher, I have run into what I view as an over-abundance of poorly conceived grammar exercises in which students are told to transform active sentences into passive ones that nobody would ever actually use.