<p>I read this from sparknotes about Passive Voice in Improving Sentences Questions. </p>
<p>"After Timmy dropped his filthy socks in the hamper, the offensive garment was washed by his long-suffering father.
(A) the offensive garment was washed by his long-suffering father
(B) his long-suffering father washed the offensive garment
(C) the washing of the offensive garment took place by his long-suffering father
(D) long-suffering, the offensive garment was washed by his father
(E) he left the offensive garment for his long-suffering father who washed it</p>
<p>Here we see passive voice rearing its horrendous head. There’s a was, a by, and the fact that you don’t know until the last word of this sentence who washed Timmy’s socks. The phrase was washed suggests that someone or something did the cleaning—a parent, a washing machine, a river in Egypt. The point is, you don’t know how the socks got washed.</p>
<p>In order to fix the passive voice, the performer of the action must get a place of prominence in the sentence and clear up what they’re doing. In the example above, the correct answer must make clear that Timmy’s father did the load of laundry. Both answers B and E fix the passive voice problem, but E is wordy and redundant, so B is the right answer."</p>
<p>I don't understand what is wrong gramatically in the sentence. I mean, it was said in the end anyway that the offensive garment was washed by his long-suffering father, so I believe that the answer can also be A</p>
<p>The problem is, how would I know how and when to correct sentences like these, because when I read the sentence, it appears to have no grammatical error, yet one of the choices is clearly better. </p>
<p>There is nothing wrong with the original sentence, and this is not a realistic question. Best to stick with actual College Board material in order to avoid this kind of confusion.</p>
<p>The original sentence is problematic because it is in passive voice unnecessarily. Passive voice is only acceptable when there is a valid reason to privilege the object over the subject. E would be ok if it ended “to wash” instead of “who washed it”.</p>
<p>The original sentence is not, in fact, “problematic.” Passive voice is not an error on the SAT; look through The Official SAT Study Guide, and you’ll note that underlined passive voice in Identifying Sentence Errors questions never counts as an error.</p>
<p>If anyone disagrees, please refer to an actual SAT Writing question to make your case instead of just parroting what some English teacher told you in an entirely non-SAT-related context.</p>
<p>Passive voice IS tested on the Improving Sentences questions; it is NOT tested on the Identifying Sentence Error questions. I teach SAT prep courses and tutor and know there are plenty of examples of Improving Sentence questions in the blue book that are wrong precisely because they are in the passive voice. The Improving Sentence questions test for awkwardness and often times the use of passive voice results in an awkward and wordy sentence. </p>
<p>Shouldn’t it be plural anyway? Socks were washed… or is this the kind of little error you ignore when you are working with non-college-board stuff? And if so, is there a catalog of ignorable errors to help you maintain proper focus, not getting side-tracked by imaginary issues? There isn’t? OK, then. Stick with college board material.</p>
<p>Actually, the sentence isn’t saying “socks” were washed; it is referring to the socks as “the offensive garment,” which is a singular subject. Subject verb agreement errors are not “little” errors at all – this is one of the most common errors tested on the writing section and you will see a minimum of 5 questions targeting students’ knowledge of this concept. There are no ignorable errors on the exam. As a standardized exam, there can only be one error on the Identifying Error Questions and there will be NO error on the correct Improving Sentence Question (all the wrong answer choices must have clear/uncontestable problems). </p>
<p>“Passive voice IS tested on the Improving Sentences questions; it is NOT tested on the Identifying Sentence Error questions.”</p>
<p>Really? Can you cite some examples similar to to the SparkNotes question quoted above, in which an answer choice is said to be wrong wrong PURELY because it contains the passive voice–and not, for example, because the passive voice creates some more serious problem (parallelism, modifiers, etc.) or because it’s self-evidently awkward?</p>
<p>I stand by my claims that (1) passive voice is not an error, although it can be associated with some errors (parallelism, modifiers, maybe others) and although some passive voice constructions may be undesirable because they are awkward (just as some active voice constructions may be) and (2) the SparkNotes question above is not realistic.</p>
<p>I’ll have to find time to go looking for them, but I’m quite sure I’ve seen Improving Sentences questions in which the right answer REQUIRES a change to passive voice in order to fix a modifiers error.</p>
<p>Consider:</p>
<p>(A) A bear attacked my friend, which bit his leg.
(B) My friend was attacked by a bear, which bit his leg.</p>
<p>I just made those up, but I think I’ve seen similar questions in the QAS.</p>
<p>“In the example, doesn’t the voice shift render the items less parallel than they would be with voice consistency?”</p>
<p>One problem I did just notice with the original is that it says “offensive garment,” whereas it should say “offensive garments,” to match “socks.”</p>
<p>Yes, choice (C) has the advantage of making the sentence more parallel<em>; at the same time, I think it has the disadvantage of making the term “the offensive garment[s]” fairly ambiguous. What I mean is this–in choice (A), the first clause ends with “filthy socks,” and the second clause begins with “the offensive garment[s].” It is thus clear that the two phrases are referring to the same items. In choice (C), that point is obscured: it is no longer clear that “the offensive garment[s]” are the “filthy socks”; in fact, it sounds rather more like they are something else.</em>*</p>
<p>To clarify, I am not suggesting that the original is beautiful writing or that (C) is terrible. I am just saying that by SAT Writing standards, there is nothing clearly wrong with (A), and there is nothing demonstrably superior about (C)–and that the question is therefore not realistic.</p>
<p>*Except, again, I don’t really think there are many real Improving Sentences questions in which lack of parallelism between dependent and independent (as opposed, for example, to parallelism between two independent) clauses is the sole error.</p>
<p>**Of course, if it simply said, “After Timmy put his socks in the hamper, his father washed them,” it would be fine (and yes, in that case, better than either (A) or (C)).</p>
<p>I don’t know why text appears crossed off in my previous post. I tried to edit it–but there’s no HTML code or anything else in the post that should be causing that.</p>
<p>If I understand correctly, passive voice per se isn’t grammatically incorrect, it’s just that it is often indicative of other more serious errors, like dangling modifiers. Therefore first response got it right. The sentence is technically correct (though awkwardly worded) and wouldn’t be on an actual SAT. If you absolutely have to practice with materials not affiliated with CB, Sparknotes shouldn’t be your first choice. Go with something like Princeton Review or Barron’s.</p>