There are a few things that are kind of foggy to me after all these years out of high school. 1.) The proper use of ('s). For a plural possessive is it merchants' ? 2.) I'll give an example of this one. He did it. He had done it. What are the appropriate uses of these two verb tenses. 3.) I need to see a few good examples of sentences that use the passive voice and those that do not. Thank you very much, in advance.
Plural possessive In order to place the apostrophe correctly in plural nouns, you must first be certain of the plural form. If you have questions about these forms, you may want to browse the section on plural nouns above. For plural nouns ending in "s," add only an apostrophe: Singers' voices The cousins' favorite uncle For plural nouns not ending in "s," add an apostrophe and "s." Men's clothing Children's books source: www.meredith.edu/grammar/plural.htm Not sure about this, but I think.... He did it. <--- shows action, although a completed action. Active He had done it. <-- simply says an action was completed. Passive Examples of passive and active: Passive The ball was thrown by the boy. Active The boy threw the ball. See this... http://www.dailywritingtips.com/7-examples-of-passive-voice/
...this is not active vs passive... it's only two forms of past tense... the first is simple past tense and the second is past perfect tense... the rest of the examples above are correct...
When you have two completed events in the past, and one event is before the other, you use past perfect for the earlier event and past simple for the later event: After he had done the shopping, he did the cleaning. Before he cooked the meat he had marinated it to make it nice and tender. All of the above sentences are active. To make the sentences passive, they must be: After the shopping had been done, the cleaning was done. Before the meat was cooked, it had been marinated.
I find this helps in distinguishing between passive and active voice: Passive voice is usually used in scientific research papers. It has the effect of making the procedures used and the conclusions reached seem less like a matter of the researcher's opinion and more like facts. For example: "The experiment was performed and this result was obtained." This is passive, and gains authority by being impersonal. "I performed the experiment and I obtained this result." This is active, but the insertion of the subject "I" makes it seem more like the author's personal opinion than the example above. Actually, maybe "opinion" is too strong a word, but this example makes it seem more like the author is taking personal responsibility for the result of the experiment.
