Passive voice

The passive voice is sometimes criticized for de-emphasizing the actor.

Many languages, including English, use auxiliary verbs in constructing the passive voice.

Phrases such as officer-involved shooting are often criticized as examples of passive voice.

On Saturday, in his first response to Charlottesville, Mr. Trump condemned the violence "on many sides." Then he lapsed into the passive voice, expressing, as he has before, a sense of futility that the divisions between Americans would ever be healed. "It's been going on for a long time in our country," he said.

Describing how the assault weapon would operate, Zworykin used the passive voice. Interactions that would have relied on both image and operator were attributed instead to airplane and camera. For example, he explains: "The carrier airplane receives the picture viewed by the torpedo while remaining at an altitude beyond artillery range."

Ashby: Access to care has always been an issue in certain demographics prior to the pandemic. We talk a lot about disparities, and I actually dislike those terms: disparities and inequality, all that, yada, yada. Harris: Is it the passive voice you don't like?