passive voice
I use a trick to teach students how to avoid passive voice. Circle the verbs. Imagine inserting “by zombies” after each one. Have the words been claimed by the flesh-hungry undead? If so, passive voice. I wonder if these sixth graders will recollect, on summer vacation, as they stretch their legs on the way home from Yellowstone or Yosemite and the byway’s historical marker beckons them to the site of an Indian village— Where trouble was brewing. Where, after further hostilities, the army was directed to enter. Where the village was razed after the skirmish occurred. Where most were women and children. Riveted bramble of passive verbs etched in wood— stripped hands breaking up from the dry ground to pinch the meat of their young red tongues.
Laura Da’