Passive Voice: The Zombie Test

[hudsonhawk]

This is a test I learned a few years ago to help identify passive voice. It isn't necessarily 100% accurate, but it's a good litmus test:

If a sentence still makes sense when you add "by zombies," it's probably written in passive voice.

Example: "The ring was given to the woman" is passive voice. "The ring was given to the woman by zombies" makes sense. "Someone gave the woman a ring" is active voice. "Someone gave the woman a ring by zombies" doesn't make sense.

Over the past few years, the writers whose work I regularly edit have come to learn that a comment of "zombies!" means they need to rewrite the sentence in active voice. "Zombie Attack" and "Zombie Apocalypse" are reserved for whole paragraphs or chapters written in passive voice.

[Baburra]

I don't think I've ever heard this tip before but I agree that it is very handy as it is truly memorable. I've long since forgotten the lessons I've learned in elementary regarding terminologies of sentence structures etc but I remember doing something similar to remember this which is to use "by" at the end and it helped me a lot in passing my English subjects.

[leahcim132]

As a native English speaker, this is actually pretty neat. I'll definitely keep this in mind when I want to write . Thanks for sharing.

[takibari]

It's kind of neat putting it this way. With "Walking Dead" and all zombie movies/shows being popular these days, it sure will help language learners to have easier recall on lessons involving passive/active voice. Nice one!