Style Academy

Isaac Ford

Kaleigh Spooner

11/24/15

Style Academy

            The Style Academy lesson that I decided to watch was on active sentences.  To be completely honest, before clicking on it and watching the video, I had no idea what an active sentence was.  However, since watching it, I have realized that that was the exact lesson I needed.  I am a huge culprit of writing passive sentences, and I had no idea.  So, to write active sentences, the instructor gives three rules: 1) No slow starts.  2) Find actors.  3) Give actors actions.  By using these three rules, it is much easier to write active sentences.

            Now, I will take an example of a bad sentence from my Issues Paper, and turn it into a well constructed active sentence by using those three rules.  The sentence is, “Although it is obvious that religious freedom is important on many different levels, we cannot however forget the need and vitality of national security.”  First of all, as mentioned in the video, the introduction to this sentence is awful.  It is a very slow start, so I should just cut it out.  Next, I need to find the actors and give them actions.  However, in doing this I should avoid nominalization, as the video counsels.  The actors need to have actual verbs, not just nouns that come from verbs.  So, after cutting out all the bad parts and trying to reword my sentence, I have come up with, “Although religious freedom is vital for a nations success, so is national security.”  This sentence is much more precise and to the point. 

            I think that the main reason I tend to avoid writing active sentences is 1) because writing passive sentences takes up more space – which I thought was important for a long paper, and 2) it made me sound more intelligent.  However, after doing this exercise and watching that video, it is very clear to me that writing active sentences is always better.  They sound much more thought out, intelligent, and professional.  Even if I could take up more space writing passively, I have made the firm resolution to write using active sentences as much as possible now.