Passive voice can also be useful when emphasizing the action but not the one doing the action. Example: “In the geographic areas selected for the study, ten random focal plants were selected as points ...

However, changing the tense deliberately can have a positive impact on your reader. For example, if you were writing a persuasive speech you may swap from the past tense to the present tense to ...

Somewhat coincidentally, I saw these Tweets not long after starting to write this week’s column on past tense verbs. The example I had in mind was “swum.” After all, when’s the last time ...