Style Sentence Variation and Passive Voice

What is “style”? Style in writing is the literary element that describes the ways that the author uses words — the author's word choice, sentence structure, figurative language, and sentence arrangement all work together to establish mood and meaning in the text.

Today, we will work specifically with sentence structure to help develop the style of our papers I can use varied and grammatically correct sentences to develop the style of my research paper. I can revise my paper for style.

Why does sentence variation matter? The typical construction of a sentence in English is this: Subject before Verb. The dog walks. The author states. The evidence suggests. So why stray from this construction?

Why does sentence variation matter? We vary our sentence construction depending on the meaning we want to convey. Often, changing the sentence structure changes the emphasis on certain parts of that sentence, and emphasis suggests importance. So, you should consider what you want your audience to perceive as the most important part of that sentence when considering the sentence structure.

Consider these two sentences: I sat next to David at the Super Bowl, which was a tremendous coincidence. A tremendous coincidence, I sat next to David at the Super Bowl. What do you see as the difference here?

Why vary our sentence structures and lengths? Discuss the importance of sentence variation with a partner and then we will discuss as a class! Consider these questions: 1) What effect do SHORT sentences have on the reader? 2) What effect do LONG sentences have on the reader? 3) What effect do COMPLEX sentences have on the reader? 4) What effect do SIMPLE sentences have on the reader?

Passive Voice Mini-lesson: Passive voice is when the action-doer is missing from the sentence and the OBJECT of the sentence has taken the place of the subject. Consider traditional English syntax: The dog chased the ball. Subject Object Passive voice looks like this: The ball was chased. The ball was chased by the dog.

Passive Voice Mini-lesson: A fun way to find passive voice: First, passive voice usually has one of the following helper verbs: am, is, are, was, were, be, being, been Find the helper verb and the following verb; then, insert “by zombies” after it. If it works, you have passive voice you need to fix. The ball was chased BY ZOMBIES! The effect was observed BY ZOMBIES! Steps have been taken BY ZOMBIES!

Passive Voice Mini-lesson: Why is passive voice “bad”? It’s not inherently bad—there’s a time and place for passive voice (science writing relies on passive voice a lot to keep work from sounding biased, for example). If you are trying to convince your audience to take action about something, though, you should probably use ACTIVE voice—strong, active verbs. As you are writing your argument paper and presentation, edit for passive voice!