Passive voice preferred sometimes

Writing is like painting, its theme must be clear






Cops shoot
dead robbers

The above is the headline of an item of news appearing in a popular national English daily (the headline being as shown above in bold print in two lines without any punctuation mark).

The headline is constructed in the active voice. If you try to rewrite the sentence in the passive voice, two ways are possible depending on how you understand the sentence.

The first way is:"Dead robbers are shot by cops" and the second:"Robbers are shot dead by cops".

Obviously, the second way is the intended meaning.

This gives us an indication that sometimes a sentence or sentences need be in the pssive voice in order to avoid ambiguity.