Letter to the Editor...
Dear Bilkent News,
While I applaud your paper's decision to feature advice on writing style, the advice should be accurate. It is erroneous to speak of the "passive tense," since the passive is not a tense but a voice: "Yesterday, Cambodia was bombed" and "Yesterday, U.S. planes bombed Cambodia" are in the same tense (past). I am also suspicious of the advice to use the active voice, especially since the article itself contains perfectly good examples of the passive; e.g. "the subject is not identified," "Cambodia still gets royally verbed."
Robin Turner, Instructor
Faculty Academic English Program
Response to the Letter:
Dear Robin Turner,
Thank you for your letter correcting our usage. Indeed, passive is a voice, not a tense. Bilkent News regrets the error.
Regarding the two instances of passive voice quoted by you, however, we aver that the author intentionally composed the clauses in the passive voice so as to create examples of how the passive fails to satisfy. Both clauses before the semicolon in the sentence that begins "In the passive [voice] -- "the object gets verbed, ... the subject is not identified" -- are intentional examples of the passive voice. After the semicolon, the voice changes to the active. Likewise, the clause "Cambodia still gets royally verbed" follows the structure of the first historical example, as indicated by the prepositional phrase: "In sentence one." Following the coordinating clause, "but in sentence two," however, the sentence acquires a new subject and finishes in the active voice. Our author intended to maintain
parallel structure while creating examples of how active and passive voice differ.
Bilkent News