Passive-Aggressive (Part 1 of 2)
By Angela Arlia

aaaaecently I received a note from a concerned fellow writer who had a grammar question about something that had bothered her for a long time. She wrote:

My first encounter with this (grammar problem) was freshman year of college when the girl across the dorm hall (who later became a roommate) subsisted on the approximate sentence structure of "Something needs done." These sentences would fly out of her mouth ALL the time. Things like:

My clothes need washed.
The table needs cleaned.
Your shirt needs ironed.

aaaaMy fellow writer said that although such phrases sounded wrong to her, for awhile she didn't let it bother her. But the more she thought about it, the more she realized what the problem was. She even told me what she thought the grammar fix was. Even though she was able to come up with the correct grammar solution herself, I chose to relay her question as a way of getting down and dirty with grammar. Just what I live for!!
aaaaThere are actually two problems with these phrases. The first problem deals with the passive tense and the other deals with gerunds and infinitives. I'm going to entertain the passive part in this article and I will address the other juicy stuff in next issue's Grammarian.
aaaaThe Passive tense in English is created by using either the present or past tense of the verb "to be" and the past participle of a verb. The reason we use the passive tense is to focus on a person or object that receives the action instead of who or what performs the action.
aaaaLet's look at two sentences that have similar components and I will explain a little more about the function of the passive tense.

Jonah wrote a letter.

A letter was written by Jonah.

aaaaIn the first example, the most important part of the sentence is that Jonah completed the action of writing a letter, while in the second sentence, the letter is the most important accomplishment. It's not even important that Jonah wrote the letter. We could even leave Jonah out of the equation in the second sentence. Good-bye, Jonah!
aaaaSometimes the passive tense is used because we don't know who or what performed the action. In sentence 2, we know it's Jonah. But in the example below, we have no idea who performed the nefarious action.

The sandwich was eaten.

aaaaThe disappearance of the sandwich is the most important thing on the person's mind, and rightly so!
aaaaAnd if we want to say who completed the action then we can add "by"…. Hi again, Jonah!
aaaaOccasionally, we don't mention who performed the action because it's obvious, as in the following sentences:

The mail was delivered. (Most likely, it was done by the mail carrier.)

The soccer ball was kicked. (Most likely here it was done by a soccer player.)

aaaaAnd if these two actions weren't performed by the people we expect to perform them, then I'm sure we would stress that by adding a "by", such as:

The mail was delivered by George Clooney. (Hallelujah!)

The soccer ball was kicked by an elephant. (Pretty cool!)

aaaaMany times the passive tense is used in scientific texts or in newspaper articles.
aaaaNow let's get back to the very important question at hand: What is wrong with those sentences I mentioned earlier? Well, they need to be in the passive tense, because the important items to look at are the clothes, the table and the shirt. We don't care who does the tasks as long as the tasks get done. It would be great if a robot washed the clothes, cleaned the table and ironed the shirt but really, the person just wants these chores done. Normally, we would say in an active sentence "I need to wash my clothes", but because we are focusing on the clothes and making them the most important aspect of our duties, we need to use the passive infinitive, which involves inserting the (unconjugated) verb "to be". Thus, we should correctly say:

My clothes need to be washed
The table needs to be cleaned
The shirt needs to be ironed

aaaaI'll join you back here in the next issue with the second part of this exciting discussion.

TO BE CONTINUED…