this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2024
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The use of passive voice in the first sentence does a lot of work shifting blame away from the driver and the car centric systems in an "objective" effort.
How about:
@apfelwoiSchoppen @ByteOnBikes Active voice would be, “A driver killed…”
They're both active voice, they just have different verbs.
Yep, high school grammar 101. It isn't that journalists don't know this, it is how they are trained. Shift obvious blame away from parties for objectivity until a verdict or deference to the status quo.
"was killed" is passive.
Yes, we all agree on that fact. The discussion progressed to two different commentors' active voice re-writes of the original sentence.
I would argue the first isn't active voice
"died when the driver of a car hit her" seems passive to me. It's more accurate, but still passive.
Both killed and died are active voice.
@apfelwoiSchoppen But functionally, the victim didn’t die on her own, she died as the direct result of the driver hitting her. For the purpose of accurately portraying who took an action and who was acted upon, it should emphasize the driving, not the dying.
The discussion was active voice vs passive voice, not functionality of active voice vs functionality of differently-worded active voice. They're both still active voice.
@PapaStevesy IMO active voice includes focusing the sentence on the subject that did the action, not the one that was acted upon but by all means let’s argue about grammatical definitions instead of the problem of motorists killing people and journalists normalizing it. 🙄
I mean, you're literally the one who started the argument, being dismissive and condescending about it now just makes you look like a sore loser.
You're the one doing that. Killed/died same difference, but I apologize for not using the same verb as the original quote for clarity.
"was killed" is passive.
Correct. I said killed.