I obviously am in great need of help with my grammar, so is there a good grammar checker out there, and which is the recommended one?
I obviously am in great need of help with my grammar, so is there a good grammar checker out there, and which is the recommended one?
I do have problems with this passive/active thing. This Grammarly App highlights passives when I am quoting what someone has written, like in medical or school reports?
Do I change it? Surely this would be wrong because how can I to change what people have written, I might as well write anything and claim it as a report.
Also, I WAS being passive when I write "the doctors thought they were curing me, but I thought I was being tortured."
I didn't actively torture myself.
When the Passive Voice is good to use.
Judicious use of the passive voice can be powerful if you want to place the emphasis on the object of the sentence rather than the subject.
So, for example, if you said: It was decided that Danny should be executed, the readers' thoughts are automatically with Danny. They’re left to wonder who it is who wants to execute him, which provokes curiosity to keep them reading.
Another time you might avoid the active voice would be when it just doesn’t matter who is the subject of the sentence.
So you might say: It was believed that a bad Spring meant a good Summer, or It was rumoured that Adam murdered his sister.
"Passive writing is necessary in a novel, but should be avoided where possible, otherwise, a would-be author will be rejected by an agent and publisher."
Surely this is a contradiction? It is ALWAYS possible to avoid the passive voice (by simply converting the sentence - or clause - into the active voice). So it "should be avoided where possible" means wiping it out of the novel completely. And yet, you say, "passive writing is necessary in a novel"???