Can you imagine if, in the middle of the night, your soft-spoken wife, husband, or sibling suddenly speaks in a hard-edged voice that definitely could not be hers or his? You’ll no doubt be puzzled, shocked, probably thrown into a state of panic. The totally unexpected is rarely welcome. It seriously violates the familiarity, sense of security, and normal rhythm of everybody’s personal universe. We thus should cultivate the art of avoiding announced shifts in voice, tense, person, and number in our writing, and of spotting and eliminating them every time they creep into our prose.
The first thing to guard against are unnecessary shifts from the active to the passive voice. Although the passive voice is sometimes desirable to use for effect, the change of point of view could be terribly confusing. Consider the jarring voice shift in this sentence: “
We doubted the authenticity of the woman’s documents, and
the truthfulness of her testimony was also doubtful.” That sentence in consistent active voice: “
We doubted the authenticity of the woman’s documents and
the truthfulness of her testimony.”
Another case of unnecessary voice shifting: “
We assigned all of our regular writing staff to the project, and
even part-time writers were hired.” Revised to all active-voice: “We assigned
all of our regular writing staff to the project and even hired part-time writers.”
The second thing to avoid are unannounced changes of verb tense in our writing. Readers get confused when—out of the blue—we shift from present to past tense, or from past to the present or to the future. Such tense shifts give the same feeling as a movie jerking and rewinding to past scenes, or lurching fast-forward to future scenes. That’s what this mixed-tense sentence does wrongly: “
She is singing beautifully[/b] when
she lost her voice.” Consistently past: “
She was singing beautifully when
she lost her voice[/i].”
Here’s another tense mix-up: “
There were many complaints when
our telephone operator answers calls in Taglish.” Consistently past: “
There were many complaints when
our telephone operator answered calls in Taglish.” Consistently present: “
There are many complaints now that
our telephone operator answers calls in Taglish.”
Of course, tense shifts are sometimes necessary: “We
succeeded last month, we
are succeeding this month, and
we will work hard to succeed next month.” What we have here is a compound sentence of three sentences in different tenses, so the no-tense-shift rule isn’t violated. In fact, it’s in the perfect tenses that tense shifts become mandatory: “The package
we had waited for all week finally
arrived this morning.”
Likewise to be avoided are
unannounced shifts in point of view. Recall that language can take three points of view: the first person, the one speaking; the second person, the person spoken to; or the third person, the person spoken about. Problems will arise particularly when the indefinite pronoun “one” is used and is later referred to as “he,” “she,” “her,” or “him.” If we stared with “one” at the start, we should consistently use “one” all throughout.
Confusing construction: “
If one thinks of the consequences of being careless,
you can be sure that accidents will be rarer.” Consistent point of view: “
If one thinks of the consequences of being careless,
one can be sure that accidents will be rarer.” Likewise confusing: “
If a woman wants to be loved,
you must love in return.” Consistent: “
If a woman wants to be loved,
she must love in return.” Also consistent: “
If you as a woman want to be loved,
you must love in return.”
Finally, avoid unannounced shifts in number; recall that in grammar, number is what makes a doer of the action singular or plural. Not following this rule consistently results in cockeyed sentences like this one: “
The baseball team took its time practicing, so they became a great fighting machine in the field.” Consistent: “
The baseball team took its time practicing, so it became a great fighting machine in the field.”
Read this essay and listen to its voice recording in
The Manila Times:
The art of avoiding voice shifts(Next:
The curse of overloaded sentences) August 24, 2023
Visit Jose Carillo’s English Forum, http://josecarilloforum.com. You can follow me on Facebook and Twitter and e-mail me at j8carillo@yahoo.com
