Page 877 - Wordsmith A Guide to College Writing

Underline the voice or tense problem in each sentence in the following
paragraph. Correct the problem by rewriting a verb in past tense or

past perfect tense or by changing a passive voice construction to

active voice.

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Yesterday, as I ran my Saturday errands, some of the people who were

seen by me made me think of Robert Burns’s poem about seeing
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ourselves as others see us. At the drugstore, I see a woman in tight
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jeans, a stained shirt, and huge pink curlers. If she thought of how
others might view her before she left the house, she might have taken

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the time to change clothes and comb out her hair. One young man
drove through a downtown street with his stereo at full blast, not

caring that others might not like the same music that was liked by
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him. He may have seen himself as sophisticated; to others on the
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street that day, he is an annoyance. An attractive middle-aged woman
in a business suit did not behave attractively toward the poodle that
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walks beside her. She jerked its leash and speaks harshly to it,
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revealing a bad temper under a polished exterior. Finally,
disgusting behavior was exhibited by one man as he sat at a traffic

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light. He casually picks his nose as if his car had rendered him
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invisible. On that Saturday, some people were seen by me who could
not see themselves as others saw them.

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