Topic 6 (session A) - Style and Style variation > Style: what is it? > Task E > Our answer

Style: what is it?

Task E - Our Answer

The copper sulphate was placed in a test-tube and heated for 5 minutes with a Bunsen burner.

We have made just one lexical change (the replacing of 'put' by placed to reflect the formality usually expected of scientific description). The original sentences were in the active form (the agent in the sentence is in the subject position, before the predicator, and the entity acted upon is in the object position, after the predicator). But in our example above, we have changed the grammatical form of the sentence from active to passive. This involves putting the object acted upon into the initial, subject position and putting the agent into a 'by-phrase' (by + NP). Then, finally, the 'by phrase' has been deleted. We spell out this process for the first sentence below.

Scientific-style language uses technical scientific terms, formal lexis and also plays up the objective, replicable nature of the experiment by removing references to individuals. The passive sentence is an important part of this process. English sentences demand subjects, and active sentences have the agent in a transitive structure in the subject position. The language of science uses passives, where necessary, to get the agent into an optional position in the grammatical structure of the sentence, so that it can then be removed, thus helping to give the writing an 'objective' style.

We looked at actives and passive sentences in topic 4, for more information you may want to revisit this section.

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