I'm still new to writing, and know I have heaps to learn, but I'm suffering from wavy green line syndrome in word.
How much notice do you all take of the wavy green lines telling you your sentence is passive with every use of the word 'was' or 'were'.
I'm reluctant to hit the 'ignore once' solution so re-writing sentences to eliminate the offending blighters, but when is it ok for a sentence to be passive?
Thank you for the replies.
I actually turned off the function for the first draft, and the first two edits as I didn't want anything to hinder my thoughts. But I'm now on the third edit and have to seriously look at sentence structure and ease of reading, so the function is an absolute nessessity for me. The good news, is that only one wavy green line highlighted a 'split infinitive' in a 70,000 word document, and since I have no idea what a split infinitive is, I did breath a sigh of relief at that.
I have had a few times where I hit the ignore on some passive sentences, but only when there is really no other way to word it. Otherwise, it is working for the good, and as Jonathan pointed out, it is showing me the correct way. If I'm totally honest, the re-write does sound much better. :-)
The good thing about the spell/grammar checker is that you can switch it off! Word comes up with some very weird ideas about usage. Passive sentences aren't necessarily wrong. In some contexts they are the accepted way to write.
I tend to leave it if I feel it makes sense. I find leaving it several days then coming back to it a few days later helps me make better sense of what I should have put...
Hope this helps!
Natalie