UNIT II (Part 1 and 2)

GRAMMAR

FROM http://www.law.louisville.edu/sites/www.law.louisville.edu/

© Judith D. Fischer 2007 (abridged)

The active voice

• When a sentence is in the active voice, the subject of the sentence is the actor.

• Examples:

– The police arrested the criminal.

– The lawyer argued the case.

The passive voice

• When a sentence is in the passive voice,

– The subject is the receiver of the action.

– The complete verb has at least two words. One of them is a form of “to be” (be, is, am, are, was, were, been).

• Examples:

- The criminal was arrested by the police yesterday.

- This case has been argued by his lawyer.

It is important to remember about tenses

The following chart shows the transformation of verb forms. It is all about a bill.

	Active Voice	Passive Voice
Present Simple	debate	is debated
Present Continuous	are debating	is being debated
Present Perfect	have debated	has been debated
Past Simple	debated	was debated
Past Continuous	were debating	was debated
Past Perfect	had debated	had been debated
Future	will debate	will be debated
Modal verbs +verb	can debate	can be debated

Problems with the passive voice

• It is vague, because no actor is identified.

• It is wordier than the active voice, especially if the writer names the actor in a prepositional phrase at the end of the sentence.

• Examples:

– The argument was made. (But who made it?)

– The argument was made by Becker. (This is wordy and less direct than the active voice version of the same idea: Becker made the argument.)

When should I use the passive voice?

• You may want to use the passive voice when the actor is unknown or unimportant:

The clerk was just shot! (You don’t know who shot the clerk).

• You may want to deflect attention from an actor:

Then the guard was stabbed. (Your client is accused of stabbing the guard, but you want to deflect attention away from your client.)

What guidelines should I follow in deciding whether to use the passive voice?

1. Determine whether a sentence is in the passive voice.

2. If it is, mentally change it into the active voice.

3. Ask yourself if the active version is better: Is it more direct? Less wordy? Clearer? Stronger? If so, you should probably change it to the active voice.

4. Then ask if you have a reason for using the passive voice. For example, do you want to deflect attention away from an actor? If so, you may want to keep the sentence in the passive voice.

5. Most of your sentences should be in the active voice.

Exercise 1.

Make up full sentences about the bill debating using the passive tense forms from the chart above.

e.g.

Bills are debated at nearly every stage of the Parliament hearings.

Now a new bill is being debated in the House of Commons.

Exercise 2.

Discuss if there is a good reason to use Passive Voice in the following sentences. Try to turn verb forms into active ones making other changes as well.

1. Each bill is first assigned to a committee for review.
2. While MPs are elected to the House of Commons, members of the House of Lords - also called peers - are appointed by the prime minister
3. The bill must be tabled before it goes further.
4. The House of Lords is made up of people who have been given titles because of their outstanding work in one field or another.
5. The last Monarch to reject a law that was wanted by both Houses of Parliament was Queen Anne.
6. Almost twelve thousand bills were introduced in Congress in one recent session.
7. If the bill is neither signed nor vetoed by the president within 10 days, the bill becomes law anyway.
8. The debate on the Bill is usually short, and limited to what is actually in the Bill, rather than what might have been included.

Exercise 3.

Change active voice into passive voice where possible/

1. Not only the House of Representatives can initiate a bill
2. The Clerk of the House is the first person to receive the bill.
3. The Clerk assigns a certain number to the bill and refers it either to the Senate or the House of Representatives.
4. An appropriate Committee arranges the reporting of the bill.
5. The Committee members report out the bill and fix the date of the final hearing by the full house.
6. After the floor reading and debates the house votes on the amended bill.
7. The bill again goes through the Committee’s hearing, mark up and debates.
8. But first both houses must agree upon all amendments and details of the bill.
9. The President considers the bill and signs it, and the bill becomes Law.
10. If the President vetoes the bill, it goes back to the Senate or the House of Representatives.

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