On sentence wrestling.

This week sentence mangling, wrestling, training, plumbing, and reverse engineering will be going on.  Some exercises involve trying to write without “by” or “to be” verbs.  When writing without the word “by,” a writer might be able to avoid passive voice constructions and extraneous prepositions.
PASSIVE: Poorer countries, especially those that have oil, are invaded by [...]

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On the active voice and jump-kicks.

good active voice formula of the day (for use with transitive verbs):
(“thing doing the action” + non-to be verb + “thing receiving action”)
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Active construction: “Wilk jump-kicked the wall.”
Passive construction: “The wall was jump-kicked by Wilk.”
Both of these sentences describe the same scene. The scene is your English teacher flying like a dagger though the [...]

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