Zombies & Recognizing Passive Voice

Grammarly.com

Zombies and Grammarly help identify your passive voice.

Just in time for all your Halloween stories, and, well . . . everything else. Zombies to the rescue!

I must admit, if I was schooled (by zombies – passive voice) regarding passive voice versus active voice in my writing, I’ve long since forgotten the lesson. I honestly never think about it, until I click post and the WordPress grammar genie in my tablet pops up with a message, Whoa, you may wanna check a few things before you do this, I found some things you missed. Thank you WordPress grammar genie for frustrating and enlightening me.

Sometimes I ignore, sometimes I learn. Most of the time I don’t care. It’s my blog. But, when I came across this post from Grammarly, it caught my eye and I started to give it a bit of thought. Seemed worthy of sharing, so here I am, sharing.

Original text from Grammarly

“Rebecca Johnson you’re a genius. Teachers everywhere should rejoice, and so should any students who haven’t yet mastered passive voice. If you’re still new to this and aren’t sure how passive voice works or why Rebecca’s work-around is so boo-tiful, let us explain.

Passive Voice

Odds are high that you have, at some point in your life, had passive voice marked on an essay or piece of writing. Odds are higher that you probably had no idea what in the world that meant. Basically, it is this. Passive voice is when the noun being acted upon is made the subject of the sentence. (Active voice is when the noun doing the action is the subject.) Let me explain with an example.

“The house was haunted.”

“The house” is the noun being acted upon, in other words “house” is the object of the verb “to haunt”. It’s clear here that the house is not doing the haunting. It is not doing the action. It is receiving the action. However, it is the subject of the sentence, which makes this sentence a passive voice sentence. (In an active voice sentence, the noun performing the action should be the subject. In this case, the active voice version would be: “Ghosts haunted the house.”)

Using “by zombies” to help identify passive voice

If you are still having trouble understanding passive voice, here is where Rebecca’s idea can help. Usually (but not always), passive voice can include the actor, usually following the verb. Basically, if you can add “by zombies” after the verb and it makes sense, you probably have passive voice.

“The town was attacked (by zombies).”

Yes, this makes sense; therefore, it is a passive voice sentence. To make this sentence active, you will need to put the noun doing the action in the subject location of the sentence. That is: “Zombies attacked the town.” Now we can check for passive voice:

“Zombies attacked the town (by zombies).”

No, this doesn’t make sense; therefore it is active voice.

These are simple examples and not every passive voice sentence will be identifiable with this trick, but it will help for a significant number of examples.”

Premio Dardos Award

Oct6

After quite the dry spell, I decided to click on my lonely WordPress link and attempt a comeback, of sorts. I was pleasantly surprised by a sweet recognition from my fellow bloggy friend saya in the form of an award. She always has something lovely to say, brightening little pieces of my day. I hope you take a moment to check out her blog and leave a kind word or two and a little encouragement.

Premio Dardos Award

Premio Dardos means prize darts in Italian, given for recognition of cultural, ethical, literary, and personal values transmitted in the form of creative and original writing.
There are 3 rules for this award:

Include the Dardos Award image.
Mention the blog that nominated you.
Nominate blogs and the reason you nominated them.

My three nominees from an ever-growing list of bloggers I admire are:

Considerings Lizzi never fails to make my heart smile . . . Her writing is real, unfiltered, and refreshing. She weaves words in a way that makes you wish to read more. I feel blessed to call her my friend.

A New Perspective Perhaps is filled with the tender realities of life, uplifting and a joy to read. Her words of faith and love send beautiful message to open our hearts and minds in ways we sometimes forget to do.

Behind The White Coat Each post I visit leaves me with something to ponder, a new perspective, and sometimes I learn something new. The experiences she shares are fascinating. From the beginnings of her medical training to the triumphs and trials of being a doctor and mother, I always enjoy visiting her thoughts.

Synaptic Connection Lost – Send Help

Oct6

Testing, testing, 1–2–3. Once upon a time, in a land far away . . . the swift brown fox jumped over the lazy dog . . .

Pardon me, just trying to be certain I’ve not forgotten how to type. It seems the keys are in working order, my fingers easily find each one, so typing is not the issue, it appears I still remember how to form words in a manner resembling sentences.

I guess I can check those excuses off my * why on earth am I not writing? * list.

There must be an internal malfunction disrupting the usual flow of words I rarely have to fight with such vigor to release.

My typically energetic neurons have been slacking off in the synaptic connection department, maybe the receptors are busted. The problem must lie somewhere within those billions of nerve cells running my information processing center. My synaptic connections are simply not synapsing and connecting.

Perhaps my neurons need input. I have hundreds of books from which to choose, all with the potential to jump-start my ridiculously stubborn mind. If I could just syphon all the excess and unneeded and unwanted thought from it, I’m certain I would regain coherent and functional use of the blasted thing.

The closest I’ve come to actual writing these past weeks was changing the words to Green Eggs and Ham to reflect my disdain for people. Sam-I-Am meets his demise at the end. A dear friend suggested I seek pharmaceutical intervention after reading it. I assured her I was properly medicated, but she seemed doubtful.

So, woe is me.

I suppose I will peruse my overflowing shelves for a good read, suggestions are welcome.

INTERMISSION

I’ve narrowed my choices down to four, but I cannot come to a final decision.

The Bell Jar —Sylvia Plath

The Professor and the Madman — Simon Winchester

Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children — Ransom Riggs

The Fourth Hand — John Irving

Please feel free to provide your thoughts as mine are wholly unreliable at this time.

The Pit and the Pity Pot

Sep12

So here it is . . . the pit. Well, I suppose it’s more of a pothole really, but it certainly feels much deeper right now. I don’t even know how I fell into it. One misstep and BLAM! I was on my behind at the bottom scratching my head and wondering how the heck I ended up in here. Looks cozy enough – There’s even a nice little pity pot for me sit upon and mull over the glorious day I’ve had thus far.

So, I am sitting here on the pity pot. It’s actually about the size of a small pool right now, care to join me? There’s plenty of room for two. Watch out though, there are little creatures below just waiting to bite you on the butt. I haven’t yet been pinched by their pearly whites, but the way this day is going I’m fairly certain it will happen soon.

Don’t worry, I won’t bore you with the details of my plight. I’ll simply say I have good reason for my brooding, at least it seems like a worthy reason at the moment. Tomorrow it may appear trivial as I know something even more dreadful will overshadow today’s events.

So much for optimism hu? My glass is half full, it really is. Unfortunately, someone has replaced it with a dribble glass and positive thinking is doing nothing more than dripping off my chin and staining my shirt.

Oh, if only the sad sound of a sigh could be written. It’s said for every dark cloud looming above there is a silver lining. It looks like tin foil from here which only reminds me the house trolls will be wanting to eat tonight and I will be forced to cook which means I’ll have to claw my way up and out of this wretched little hole and put on a happy face.

I think I might just order pizza and lock myself away in my room for the night, maybe the week. I wish my house had a tower, that would be perfect for a day like this. I could run, sobbing, up the dark, winding staircase and throw myself down upon the beautiful canopy bed at the top of the tower. I know, makes no sense, but there is always a pretty little room at the towers top in the movies, isn’t there?

I doubt my prince charming would saunter in and wake me from my fitful slumber with the sweet kiss of truest love, freeing me forever of my torment and whisk me away into happily ever after though. Nope, not my Romeo. He’d probably forget all about me until he ran out of clean underwear.

I would cry it out, but then I would have a stuffy nose and a headache. I would scream, but the neighbors would think I’m nuts. I know, I know, I’m deluding myself, they all came to that conclusion long ago. I’d pull out my hair, but . . . ouch. I’d break something, but then I’d just have to clean it up and in doing so, would cut myself on a broken piece of whatever it was and bleed to death.

I guess I am doing the only thing I can do, write about nonsense and nothing until I feel better. You know what? I think it’s working. I actually do feel a bit better . . . I still wish I had a tower though. The drama of it all would be so grand.

Tonight will be one of those nights I must end with my knees on the ground and my eyes toward the heavens. He’ll know how to fix it, he always does.

Crystal R. Cook

Tanka Poetry – Night

Sep6

Daily Post – Tanka Poetry

Tanka Poem in three verses . . .

In the dark of night
moonbeams pierce the veil of black
lighting paths for dreams
slowly falling from the stars
finding their way to your heart

Restless spirits still
embraced in slumbers respite
quiet calm comforts
with softly sung lullabies
carried gently in the wind

Angels tiptoe in
to caress your weary brow
soundly may you sleep
they keep vigil through the night
till the morn comes and you rise

Tanka Poetry – Broken

Sep6

Daily Post – Tanka Poetry

Artist – Antonio Canova

Broken, still she stands
open wounds, never to heal
fragments of lost dreams
pieces of past promises
keep her from falling apart

Crystal R. Cook

Tanka Verse 5-7-5-7-7

Was there anything so real as words? Oscar Wilde

Sep6

Capturing Eternity – Haiku

Sep6

Rage & Flammable Haiku Challenge – two more

Sep4

ronovanwrites weekly haiku challenge

~ R a g e & F l a m m a b l e ~

Two more . . . they keep floating around my head.

Rage consumes like fire
flammable, burning red hot
till nothing remains

Anger, jealousy –
ignite flammable weakness,
fuel the fires of rage

Crystal R. Cook

Serendipitous Prestidigitonium!

Sep4

In 1774 Horace Walpole coined a wonderful word, one of my favorites, and to best illustrate the intent of this new word, he wrote of a Persian fairy tale, The Three Princes of Serendip, these three princes had a habit of “always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of.”

Serendipity, a fortunate happenstance, a pleasant, unexpected surprise. I love serendipity.

Serendipitous in an apt description for a relatively recent discovery of my own. I had the fortunate happenstance and I dare say sagacity, to point and click my way to a wonderful little corner of the cyber world called considerings.

The particular link which caught my fancy was titled, I’m not writing about not-writing, but I #AmWriting. Writing about writing, or not writing, but writing, is among my very most favorite things to write about, so I was compelled to see what bloggy bit of written wit was behind the title.

I was pleasantly surprised and definitely delighted as I read, it sounded like something I would have written myself, I loved it and said as much in the comment box. I decided to ~~stalk~~ follow the writer. She ~~stalked~~ followed me back, kismet.

This particular blogger, Miss Lizzi, is witty and real and funny and her writing reflects these things, I admire and appreciate that. She says what she feels as she feels it. I must say, it’s refreshing. You should follow her if you haven’t found her yet. There are so many cut and paste, formulaic and, I’ll just say it, fake, superficial, and all around abysmal writers/people, trying be something they simply aren’t, it’s disheartening. She is most certainly not among them.

By the way – If I blog-stalk you, you are not among them either, I love the blogs I follow . . .

Now, the ultimate purpose of this post is to thank my new-found Lizzi for making my heart smile, not just with her words, but for an unexpected, thoughtful and perfect gift.

For my silly comment she wanted to send me something, I said no, but the idea someone should go out of their way and make such an offer made me feel all tingly inside. As we continued to ~~stalk~~ talk, we came to realize we have more than a love for writing in common, and because she posted about her spiders I told her about mine, I had to then talk about my snake, Archimedes, which naturally ended in a discussion about Disney’s The Sword In the Stone. Natural for us at any rate apparently.

Being the charming weaver of words she is, she continued to urge me to accept the previous gift offer, and so strangely out of character for me, I consented.

Fast forward to two days ago – I checked my mail and prestidigitonium! A package containing one of my very favorite Disney classics, The Sword In The Stone, was waiting for me. Is it weird that I actually got a little choked up? Well, I did. I felt a little mushy in the heart region.

This sort of thing doesn’t happen to me, yet twice this year I have been blessed to receive a thoughtful gift from a faraway friend I’ve not had the honor and ultimate privilege of standing face to face with, so I guess it does happen to me.

I haven’t the words to express just how it feels to be given the blessing of a friendship, a connection that bridges distance and social norms, whatever those are, and touches your heart.

I don’t quite now how best to say thank you Lizzi . . . are there any movies or books you’ve been longing for? For the moment, my words, my gratitude, and my friendship are yours. Thank you, so very much.