That genuinely made me laugh! 
The book is like that all the way through… but it’s a good read and I think it’s well done. Worth a read if you like jeu d’esprits, though some critics did claim more for it than that.
Too much of anything gets to be tiresome. Making every sentence active to the maximum degree is far worse than interspersing adverbs here and there. A grammar program once tagged “naked” as passive voice in the sentence, “We were naked.” I should have said, “Sally naked them,” I suppose — if Sally’s the one who did it.
Didn’t say he wasn’t a good writer. Just not an impeccable source for good advice.
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I’m working on a novel using only spaces…
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A lot of people are hazy about what exactly the passive voice is.
If you say “She carried”, that’s active. “She was carried” is passive.
“She sang the song” - active. “The song was sung” - passive.
“She spoke Italian” - active. “Italian was spoken to her” - passive.
Because screenwriting is written in present tense, the most common use of passive voice involves the verb “is” and the verb suffix “-ing.”
She carries vs She is carrying
She sings vs She is singing
Also, it’s good to remember that passive voice has its place. it’s just best that it doesn’t dominate your work.
That’s surely not passive voice but present continuous tense?
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Not really, I’m afraid, though this a very common belief.
“She is carrying” is not passive at all: it’s a perfectly standard active present continuous verb. The passive equivalent would be “she is being carried”.
“She is carried” is the passive equivalent of “she carries”.
The problem arises because English uses forms of the verb to be (and a few other verbs like ‘to get’) to construct both active and passive verbs
Subject + to be form + present participle = active
I + am + singing
He + was + doing
They + will have been + running
Subject + to be form + past participle = passive
The song + is being + sung
The job + was + done
The race + will have been + run.
It’s a bit more complex than that, because some past participles are indistinguishable from adjectives. So “I was shattered” looks passive, but it’s actually just a standard subject + to be form + adjective construction.
If anyone’s interested in more details, there’s a really useful article by linguist Geoff Pullum on the passive here: Language Log » The passive in English
Pullum also points out that even style gurus like The Elements of Style don’t understand the basic grammar of the passive (and much besides) The Land of the Free and The Elements of Style Which is an entertaining read (for grammar nerds…)
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@brookter has nailed it, along with some interesting articles.
Garner tackles this nicely:
The point about passive voice is that the subject of the clause doesn’t perform the action of the verb. Instead, you back into the sentence:
— Passive: The deadline was missed by the applicant.
— Active: The applicant missed the deadline.
And, of course, in the passive form, it’s possible to omit the actor altogether – a prime source of unclarity. Sometimes it amounts to responsibility-dodging:
— Passive: The deadline was missed.
As anyone who follows political discourse knows, the passive voice is a staple of politicians: mistakes were made.
The unfailing test for passive voice is this: you must have a be-verb (or get) plus a past participle (usually a verb ending in -ed).
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Hmmm I was just reading this article by Pullum 50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice that tackles the same problem.
Good writing would be similar to good cooking where a variety of ingredients are blended to get the desired effect. That would be impossible if you limit your list of ingredients. Or if an artist was not allowed to use certain colors that would certainly limit his range of creative expression.
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A few decades ago, I was teaching English in a college for budding Swiss business-people in London. On one one occasion I was teaching a class at a level where the passive voice was introduced. At our next session, a guy at the back said, “Why are we wasting time learning the passive?”
“We’re not wasting time. What makes you say that?”
“I asked my landlady last night (always a sign that rubbish was coming!) and she said the passive is never used in English.”
I managed not to laugh, but he couldn’t see her mistake.
Mark
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Aghhh …
It’s not enough for me to learn and write about how and why the sky is falling …
Now I have to learn about how not to write about it in the passive voice …
The work never ends!
scrive
P.S. Thanks to those here who have taken the time to explain what my English teachers (who tried) never quite succeeded in doing.
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In the end I always do final edits by reading them out loud. I don’t check if they are passive or active. I just care if it sounds right and flows nicely.
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Then you’ll be glad to know that “the sky is falling” is a perfectly normal active phrase (it’s the third person singular present continuous tense of the verb “to fall”) so you can write about how everything is going to pieces in perfect equanimity!
As long as you don’t say “we’ve all been f***** (by…)” because the verb “to be f****** (by…)” really is passive because somebody else is doing the f****** with/by you, not the other way round…. 
Nobody ever said English is logical…
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Why isn’t ‘one’ spelled the way it sounds? In this video, Finnish comedian ISMO tries to tackle the complexities of English’s most basic numbers.
youtube.com/watch?v=T9kz2TaPBzs
He next does a linguistic study of the most complicated English words.
A survey of scatological taxonomy. (-:
youtube.com/watch?v=igh9iO5BxBo
A nuanced analysis of the gluteus maximus (-:
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I actually think English has a high degree of logic, once you (a) dump all the misconceptions resulting from the traditional attempt to explain it in terms of Latin grammar, and (b) accept the fact that the curious spellings are not simply weird phonology but also represent a morphemic basis, particularly in those words descended from Anglo-Saxon.
Mark
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Hi brookter,
Thank you for providing more than just a bit of levity, along with a bit of perspective that I often sorely forget but desperately need. Thank you.
My story is about a simple tool. My challenge is how to communicate the simplicity of the tool, and how effective the tool could be.
My first task, however, is the journey that I need to take to understand what exactly the vision is about, before I can even attempt to describe the vision to others. Whatever happens, there will be more than a shared nuisance for all. My goal is to possibly add an arrow in the quiver for the world to consider as we collectively watch as the sky falls. Much of the future is already solidified within the sky, but perhaps we can provide a way for future generations to reduce additional degrees of skyfall.
Hell is having such a view of the future without the possibility of an alternative.
So it is with a simple chuckle, bordering on a full blown laugh, of appreciation that I read your assessment of the 'third person singular present continuous tense of the verb “to fall”’.
Thank you,
scrive
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You’re welcome!
May your arrows fly straight and true.
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