The style academy lesson that I decided to focus on was active sentences. After meeting with Sister Spooner I realized that I have way too many passive sentences in my paper. I have been frustrated lately with my papers but I haven’t been able to figure out why, but after watching this video I have realized what I’ve been doing wrong.

            This is a sentence from my paper that I have changed into a more active sentence. “By the lack of action and interest taken by the United States Government it is apparent that the Mormon church is in no way going against the already established laws in the United States.” The original sentence was “It is really easy to see by the lack of action and interest that the United States Government has taken during this whole process that the Mormon church is not going against the laws that have been established in the United States.” The biggest problem that I found was the start of the sentence. It was drawing the attention away from the topic of the sentence.

            When I write I have a bad tendency to think “longer is better.” Passive sentences are usually longer so I use those a lot more often than active sentences. But after watching the video I found that active sentences are so much better. They do a much better job at getting the point across compared to passive sentences.