Passive voice weakens your writing. It obscures responsibility for action. Those who learn English as a second language struggle to make sense of the many ways in which Americans use passive verb constructions in everyday speech. It often finds its way into our writing. Rarely is the writer conscious of this problem in their writing. Passive voice is used by victims. Instead of actors, they are acted upon. Let me help you understand passive voice and how you can get rid of it in your writing. “The boy was hit by the bus.” Passive. The boy is the subject of this sentence. He is the passive recipient of action. The responsible party for the vehicular accident ends up an object in the sentence instead of an actor. The focus is on the victim, not on who or what caused the crash. Who did what to whom? “The bus hit the boy.” Active voice. Notice the different grammatical sentence structure. Subject-verb-object. The subject is the bus. The bus acts upon the direct object, the boy. The readers’ sympathies still lie with the boy; often intended by the writer of a passively constructed sentence. The action and agency, however, are front and center. The reader can see the bus crash into a boy more easily with the active verb of “hit.” Responsibility for the action is clear. See if you can change these 10 sentences into active voice. The transcript was stamped with a seal of approval by the registrar. Grant recipients…
Many aspiring authors think they can’t afford to hire an editor. If your plan is to publish, then the truth is you can’t afford NOT to hire one. Anyone can call themselves an “editor,” yet not all editors are the same. There is no test or certification process. Be choosy when you hire one. Instead of looking for the cheapest rate, look for editors with… [Read More]
Do we need quotation marks? Who needs punctuation? Times are a-changing. One of the signs punctuation marks are in flux is the air quotations people make with their fingers when using words ironically. In print, we’ve seen the rise of single quotation marks around sarcastic words or phrases, even though the standard rule for single quotation marks are for use inside double quotation marks to… [Read More]
Q&A with Mauro Marinelli Samantha Kolb Mauro Marinelli is an artist, photographer, author, contractor, and one-time novitiate based in New York. Kehrer Verlag publishes his second book of art photography, Under Old Stars: Wanderings in Italian Hill Towns in the fall, and an exhibition with prints from the book will open on September 22 at the American Italian Cultural Center in New Orleans. I had… [Read More]
Those who think writing a children’s picture book might be easier than writing one for adults may be surprised to learn it is not. Children’s books are treated differently in the publishing industry. The market is highly segmented by age, grade, and reading levels. The content of any children’s book needs to be age-appropriate. And to complicate things further, children don’t buy books. Adults do…. [Read More]
On the north side of Chicago, I discovered Women & Children First, one of the largest feminist bookstores in the country. With an inventory of more than 30,000 books written by and for women, this independent bookstore caters exclusively to women, children, and the LGBTQ community. If you’ve never visited a feminist bookstore, you may have seen one on TV. Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein… [Read More]



