Active voice sounds repetitive?

[margs999]

Hey guys so writing is definitely not my best skill and I am currently trying to tighten up my PS. A few people have read my paper and they all say I write too much in a passive voice. I am currently rewriting a large portion of the paper, however, I feel like the paper is starting to sound repetitive. "I did X, I realized Y, I developed Z". Anyone have a tips for making sentences sound a little more varied and not so sterile.

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[deleted889094]

Hey guys so writing is definitely not my best skill and I am currently trying to tighten up my PS. A few people have read my paper and they all say I write too much in a passive voice. I am currently rewriting a large portion of the paper, however, I feel like the paper is starting to sound repetitive. "I did X, I realized Y, I developed Z". Anyone have a tips for making sentences sound a little more varied and not so sterile.

This might not be the best place for writing advice, but I would recommend you play around with word order and use an online thesaurus. It's a good way to spice things up

 

[907914]

For real world non-college-essay writing, literally ditch everything that school taught you and just write what sounds good.

 

[deleted889094]

Variations in your sentence structure is the trick here. Rather than "I did X, I realized X, I developed X," try: Doing X helped me realize X. Later, I developed X. While X was challenging for me, I eventually learned X. If you're struggling with this, I'd recommend going to your school's writing center or finding a proofreader who is a skilled writer (English or philosophy major friend, former English teachers/writing professors, etc.).

I'd actually avoid thesauruses (thesauri?) for your PS/application essays. These essays are supposed to give us an idea of your personality and character. The writing should be organic and in your own voice - if it's not something you'd say aloud in conversation, including words you don't normally use, it's probably not representing you accurately. I also find that when people use a thesaurus to find fancier/unique words, they tend to have issues with proper usage, connotations, etc. which is not what you want to deal with in an application essay.

Yeah, I agree. I would only recommend a thesaurus for changing between normal-person words. No need to get excessively fancy

 

[907914]

 

[margs999]

Appreciate all the responses! Maybe I'm wrong but isn't, "Doing X helped me realize X" in a passive voice? Im pretty sure the active version of that is "I realized X by doing X". Haha, either way point taken. As far variation I'm not looking for SAT words to just throw in, more concerned with the fact that many of my sentences were written passive ( X prompted me to do Y) and changing them all to active ( I did Y because of X) is apparently stronger writing (*shrugs*). @cj_cregg does give some good examples though. Any other advice still appreciated!

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

Appreciate all the responses! Maybe I'm wrong but isn't, "Doing X helped me realize X" in a passive voice? Im pretty sure the active version of that is "I realized X by doing X". Haha, either way point taken. As far variation I'm not looking for SAT words to just throw in, more concerned with the fact that many of my sentences were written passive ( X prompted me to do Y) and changing them all to active ( I did Y because of X) is apparently stronger writing (*shrugs*). @cj_cregg does give some good examples though. Any other advice still appreciated!

Active voice is considered stronger because if the entire piece is written in passive voice, it has the feeling of the narrator being pulled along, having everything happen TO them as opposed to being an active participant. But that doesn’t mean you need to take every sentence and change it to active voice. Sometimes things do happen to us and change us. You want plenty of active voice, but having some passive sentence structure is fine if the narrative calls for it.

 

[LizzyM]

View attachment 262375

We had an English teacher who made us do as an exercise this to make the point that it was a bad idea.

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

Nope - the verb "helped" is still in the active form, the subject of the sentence is just the gerund ("doing X") rather than the pronoun (me/I). The passive voice of that sentence would be something like saying "X was done/was realized by you."

"X prompted me to do Y" is also still in the active voice - X is the subject, the verb "prompted" is in an active form, and "me" is the object. The passive form of that sentence would be "I was prompted by Y to do X."

A good rule of thumb is that if there are no helper verbs in the sentence, it's probably not passive - was done, is understood, were read, etc.
ETA: but the reverse is not necessarily true - you can have helper verbs in an active sentence.

This. Purdue’s writing lab has a lot of good resources. https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_...assive_voice/active_versus_passive_voice.html

 

[margs999]

Last question in regard to your last post @cj_cregg. Maybe I'm thinking about it wrong but doesn't "Doing Y helped me realize X" equate to

- Playing the piano helped me realize the importance of melody

- the subject is the piano
- the verb is playing
- the noun performing the verb (playing) is me

While the active form would be:

- I realized the importance of melody playing the piano

Again, I really struggle grasping the whole voice concept, so this last clarification will help.

 

[deleted889094]

Last question in regard to your last post @cj_cregg. Maybe I'm thinking about it wrong but doesn't "Doing Y helped me realize X" equate to

- Playing the piano helped me realize the importance of melody

- the subject is the piano
- the verb is playing
- the noun performing the verb (playing) is me

While the active form would be:

- I realized the importance of melody playing the piano

Again, I really struggle grasping the whole voice concept, so this last clarification will help.

Passive form would be "was realized"
So unless you're saying "The importance of Melody was realized by me through playing the piano" you're not using passive voice in that phrase.

It might be helpful to look up the participle forms of verbs to get the idea. I really only understood this through learning another language.

Example: Eat

Present Active: I am eating the apple
Present Passive: The apple is being eaten
Past Active: I was eating the apple
Past Passive: The apple was being eaten

There are future tenses too, but hopefully you get the idea. English has helper words to indicate some of the participle stuff. Other languages, Like Russian, have changes to the words themselves to indicate it, which is a bit easier to pick out

Did you do the thing or was the thing being done? Just ask that when you're writing