I traced down the source to Rebecca Johnson, professor of culture and ethics at USMC, where she wrote this on her twitter feed:
I finally learned how to teach my guys to ID the passive voice.
If you can insert "by zombies" after the verb,
you have passive voice.
Check out her twitter tweet here.
It has since gone viral and just by typing 'passive voice by zombies' into Google will find many people using the 'by zombies' code of identifying passive voice in English.
What is the English passive voice?
Using the auxiliary verb to be or (sometimes) get with the past participle of the main verb.
Examples:
The moon is hidden.
He was forgotten.
My clothes get washed.
The passive voice puts focus on the receiver of the action rather than the doer of that action.
Add the prepositional phrase with the preposition by:
The moon is hidden by zombies.
He was forgotten by zombies.
My clothes get washed by zombies.
The preposition by names the doer of the action.
In the active voice these sentences would read:
Zombies washed my clothes.
Zombies forgot him.
Zombies hid the moon.
Why zombies?
We could easily say by me, by my mom, by vampires etc., but zombies are right now are a big part of popular culture right now from movies like Night of the Living Dead or the hit TV show The Walking Dead. So as an expression of humor we compose passive sentences using 'by zombies' to ease our fears from that thing that scares us.
**Warning**
The passive voice has more complicated grammar structures and this is just skeletal outline of how to identify, write and speak passive sentences that are read and heard by zombies!
Happy learning!
P.S. Don't forget to include your own passive voice 'by zombies' sentences in the comments. I look forward to reading them.
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