77Rule #17: Passive versus Active .............................................................
Constructing a sentence in passive voice is NOT grammatically wrong, but ETS DOES frown upon it.
ALWAYS CHOSE ACTIVE IF YOU HAVE THE CHOICE!
Passive: The meal was cooked by her.
Active: She cooked the meal. (Ah...much better, because the subject, “she” is doing the action “cooked.”)
Also be on the lookout for the use of nouns, when the use of verbs
would make the sentence less wordy.
Don’t construct a sentence that reads, “Her diabetes prevents her from the consumption of too much sugar.”
Get rid of the noun (consumption) and change it to an active verb (consuming).
Revised sentence: Her diabetes prevents her from consuming too much sugar.
Rule #18: Redundancy ............................................................................
Redundancy has not been tested as frequently on recent SAT tests as it has in the past.
Redundancy means A LITERAL REPETITION OF WORDS.
Redundancy is not the same thing as wordiness.
What makes redundancy so tricky to spot is that ETS will separate the repetitive words or phrases with a whole
bunch of junk in between.
For example: The annual election for student body president is held every year in March.
Did you catch the redundancy error? Annual and every year are repetitive. To fix either remove “annual” or
“every year.”
Revised Sentence: The annual election for student body president is held in March.
Here’s a common redundancy: On the previous test before this one, Kristen scored an A.
Previous and before this one are redundant. Eliminate one or the other.
Revised Sentence: On the previous test, Kristen scored an A.