Using passive voice
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Passive voice in context | page 2 of 4 |
Maintaining the topic
The following example comes from the report of a court case about the activities of someone called Ma. Both active and passive voice clauses are used in talking about Ma's activities:
The court heard that Ma forged his parents' signatures to give authority to the bank to release funds on the signature of anyone of the four in the family.
The court also heard that Ma later appeared to have got into financial trouble on the currency-futures market and he systematically defrauded about 10 customers of the bank out of some $14 million.
As things went from bad to worse he resorted to his parents' nest egg and stole the whole $2 million from them, the judge said. He was arrested and pleaded guilty to a number of charges but he was not charged in relation to his parents' funds. He was sentenced to four years' jail which he is still serving. (SCMP 7/8/92)
As this extract is mainly about what Ma did and about what happened to him, many
of the clauses begin with Ma or he, in other words, Ma or he
are the topics 
of the clauses. Where the clauses concern something that Ma did, active clauses are used,
eg Ma forged his parents' signatures and he systematically defrauded about 10
customers of the bank out of some $14 million. Where the clauses concern something
that happened to Ma, passive clauses are used, eg He was arrested and He
was sentenced to four years' jail. The use of both active voice and passive voice thus
allows Ma to be maintained as the topic throughout most of this extract.
For further information about passive voice and topic, see 
Using passive voice: What is passive voice for?.
Maintaining the topic
