2.6 Active and Passive Voice, Logical Comparison, and Logical Agreement
Key Takeaways
- Passive voice is a grammatical option, not an error; it is the right choice when the agent is unknown, irrelevant, or deliberately backgrounded.
- An agentless passive that hides responsibility is a revision target, and CLEP options often pair a passive with an active alternative that preserves meaning.
- Logical comparison requires comparing like categories, which usually means adding 'that of', 'those of', or a possessive.
- Comparisons must also be complete and unambiguous: 'more effective' needs a stated second term, and 'than anyone' needs 'else' within the same group.
- Logical agreement requires the subject to be capable of the predicate - a study cannot argue, and a decision cannot be hired.
2.6 Active and Passive Voice, Logical Comparison, and Logical Agreement
The Conventions outline lists active/passive voice, logical comparison, and logical agreement as separate items. None of them is a rule about form. Each asks whether the sentence's grammar matches the relationship it claims — which is why they also drive a share of the Revision area's sentence-level questions.
1. Active and Passive Voice
In the active voice, the grammatical subject performs the action: The committee approved the budget. In the passive voice, the subject receives it: The budget was approved by the committee. The passive is formed with a form of be + past participle, optionally followed by a by-phrase naming the agent.
Passive Is Not an Error
Treating every passive as a mistake is the single most common overcorrection on revision items. The passive is the better choice in four situations:
| Situation | Example | Why passive works |
|---|---|---|
| The agent is unknown | The manuscript was donated anonymously in 1911. | No agent can be named. |
| The agent is irrelevant | Samples were incubated for 48 hours. | Method matters; who held the pipette does not. |
| The receiver is the topic | The Voting Rights Act was signed in 1965. | The act is what the paragraph is about. |
| Cohesion demands it | Enrollment rose sharply. That increase was driven by three transfer agreements. | Keeps given information in subject position. |
That last case connects directly to the given-to-new principle covered in the Revision chapter: sometimes the passive is what keeps a paragraph coherent.
When to Convert
Convert to active when the passive is doing one of these jobs:
- Hiding an agent that matters. Mistakes were made names no one. The regional office misfiled the applications does.
- Padding the sentence. A review of the data was conducted by the auditors is nine words for The auditors reviewed the data.
- Stacking. Chains such as It was determined that a decision had been reached bury two actions inside two passives.
Conversion procedure: find the real agent, move it into subject position, and turn the participle into a finite verb.
| Passive | Active |
|---|---|
| A survey of student habits was conducted by the committee. | The committee surveyed student habits. |
| It was recommended by the panel that funding be increased. | The panel recommended increasing funding. |
| The equipment was damaged during transport. | (Keep — the agent is genuinely unknown.) |
Exam behavior: when one option is active and one is passive and both are grammatical, the active option usually wins — unless the passive keeps the paragraph's topic in subject position or the agent is genuinely unknown. Check the surrounding sentences before assuming active is correct.
2. Logical Comparison
A comparison is logical only when the two compared items belong to the same category.
- Illogical: The salary of a software engineer is higher than a technician. (compares a salary to a person)
- Logical: The salary of a software engineer is higher than that of a technician.
- Logical: A software engineer's salary is higher than a technician's.
Use that of for a singular noun, those of for a plural, or a possessive with the noun understood.
| Faulty | Corrected | What was compared |
|---|---|---|
| The climate of San Diego is milder than Chicago. | …milder than that of Chicago. | climate to climate |
| The novels of Austen are shorter than Dickens. | …shorter than those of Dickens. | novels to novels |
| Unlike most economists, the theory ignores labor mobility. | Unlike most economists, the author ignores labor mobility. | person to person |
Incomplete and Ambiguous Comparisons
Two further defects appear regularly:
- Incomplete. The new protocol is more efficient. More efficient than what? A comparative adjective needs a second term unless the context supplies it unmistakably.
- Ambiguous. The director praised the analyst more than the auditor. Did the director praise the analyst more than the auditor did, or more than the director praised the auditor? Complete the elliptical clause: …more than the auditor did.
- Group inclusion. Kenji scored higher than anyone in his section. Kenji is in his section, so he cannot outscore himself. Write anyone else in his section.
- Double comparatives. More faster, most fastest, and more better are never standard.
3. Logical Agreement
Logical agreement asks whether the subject can actually perform the predicate. The sentence may parse perfectly and still assert something impossible.
| Illogical | Problem | Repaired |
|---|---|---|
| The study argues that emissions have plateaued. | A study is a document; its authors argue. (Widely accepted in academic prose, but flagged when paired with a better option.) | The study's authors argue that emissions have plateaued. |
| After graduating, the firm hired her as an analyst. | The firm did not graduate. | After she graduated, the firm hired her as an analyst. |
| The decision to expand the campus was hired last spring. | A decision cannot be hired. | The architect who planned the expansion was hired last spring. |
| One of the reasons for the delay is because the permit lapsed. | Reason … is because is redundant; a noun complement is required. | One of the reasons for the delay is that the permit lapsed. |
| The purpose of the audit is to identify errors and for improving controls. | Mismatched complements after one linking verb. | …is to identify errors and to improve controls. |
The Faulty Predication Test
Reduce the sentence to its bare subject, verb, and complement, then ask whether the resulting statement is possible in the world.
"The rise in tuition decided to enroll part-time." → subject rise, verb decided. A rise cannot decide. The sentence needs a human subject: Because tuition rose, many students decided to enroll part-time.
Faulty predication is easy to miss because the reader silently supplies the intended meaning. Slow down on any sentence whose subject is an abstraction — decision, increase, purpose, reason, goal, policy — and confirm that the abstraction can do what the verb says it does.
Which sentence corrects the faulty comparison in 'The graduation rate at the community college is higher than the state university'?
A lab report reads: 'The samples were incubated at 37 degrees Celsius for forty-eight hours.' Should this passive construction be converted to the active voice?
Which sentence contains a faulty predication error?