Sin And Syntax Analysis

As a writer, I have always had major concerns when it came to differentiating passive and active voice. Before reading, passive voice was not something I understood much, if at all. I still feel as if I could do more to practice in order to get better at knowing the differences, though practice can help in that aspect. While reading Hale’s article and Sin and Syntax, I noticed she uses a lot of the same writing for both, examples included. Even with these helpful examples, I do find myself confused on determining what falls under passive and active voice myself. Hale uses the clarification “subject performing action vs. being acted upon”, which does help when looking at it in a bare bones manner. Kollin’s section on passive voice equally, if not more, …show more content…
It reminded me of the “Sweet and Sour” tutoring method, where you begin with positive ideas and overall compliments before heading towards what could use work. There are no snarky comments here like in Hale, but Kollin’s section still kept my attention. Despite seeming shorter, I feel like all the examples that Kollin’s used help give me a basis of what to be wary about as opposed to Hale’s explanations and reasoning. For instance, Kollin’s clarified for an example how the quote was not meant to “point out who was responsible for implementing the urban-renewal plan but rather to show the results of this implementation” (Kollin 40). This reminded me of how in class, we discussed that with passive voice the blame is often left up in the air, whereas with active voice the blame is usually assigned. An in class example would be “The boy ate the pizza”. The boy is to blame so that makes the statement active voice. Also, the structure of the sentence is sub-verb-object instead of the other way around where the object would be the