PS: I love English very much, for it enables me to know more and more about this fascinating world. So, please tell me your understanding of this issue. In this unusual classroom situation, I need to be accurate about everything, if possible. ", as a teacher, I might use it as an example to explain this aspect of the English language.
#Namely punctuation tv
Although in daily life we usually do not use the sentence in the passive "The TV is watched by the family in the evenings. ", namely, the addition of "the" before "TV", the changes of "this" and "every evening" to "the" and " in the evenings" respectively? Is it again that most of the time you native speakers just speak this way? I know that we always "watch TV", rather than "watch the TV". Here I would like you to enlighten me about why you revise three places of my first sentence "TV is watched by this family every evening. (Edit: Also, your second example should read "The family watch es TV every evening".watch your subject/verb agreement!)Ĭlick to expand.Thanks for your great explanation of your preference of the active voice over the passive in most cases, Vayda. Or, as my ninth grade teacher put it, to be verb + past participle = passive voice! 99% of the time it's better to simply rephrase a sentence so that the strong verb (watched, in your example) is done by the subject of the sentence. However, you WILL find occasions when passive voice is happily used in English - as a matter of fact, I just did it there, with "is happily used." However, you should consider these instances the exceptions, and not the rule.
I doubt a native speaker would say "The TV was watched by the family in the evenings," because we're so trained to avoid passive voice that speaking in it sounds unnatural. Consequently, writing in passive voice is boring, because it necessitates the constant use of "be" verbs. The grammatical problem with passive voice, and what makes it weak, is that the subject (in your example, "The TV") does not do the strong verb of "watch." The verb associated with TV is "was".and despite what Descartes might think, we consider superfluous use of "be" verbs to be boring to read.
Technically, it's "wrong" to do, although in other languages (namely Spanish) it's not only perfectly fine, but actually the best voice to use in some cases. That's something that us native speakers usually shun (well, us native speaking English teachers, maybe not so much the rest of the population) because it is a "weaker" form of writing. The problem with your first example is that it is written in passive voice. In your related questions, I don't see why you couldn't do it that way, but it would most likely subordinate the clause and change how you would punctuate it (it would probably be with a comma, not with a semicolon or as a separate sentence). I'm not up on my British/Australian/other grammar
Perhaps the style of punctuating the rest of the sentence is different if you're outside of the states, too. He dropped out of school when he was in the fifth grade."Īlso, I don't know where you're from, but I've never heard "Grade Five" used conventionally as opposed to "fifth grade". I think it reads best when it's like this: "Take my brother, for example. I do think you need the comma there, before "for example" as well. I believe an em dash or colon would also work in this case. I would consider "Take my brother, for example" to be an independent clause and it would therefore need to be separated from the rest of the sentence by a semicolon or be its own sentence.
#Namely punctuation mod
I think this should be in the grammar issues forums, a mod will probably move.
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