A Plethora of Doubts

I have always had a hard time with the passive voice. I don’t know exactly why and am not even sure exactly what the passive voice is. To me passive versus an active voice is to speak indirectly versus to the point. When a friend reads my papers and tells me that I could have said just as much in fewer words I can see their point. My papers can be wordy making them really ineffective at keeping a reader’s attention. I’m not sure what my problem is or how to get around using a passive voice. When I write I put down first what comes into my head and then I look to get rid of any fluff that I don’t need. I have a question about this though, while trying to get rid of the passive voice will I destroy my voice? I believe I would want to, in part, if I talked in circles or indirectly. Yet, how might I delete the extra and still keep "me" in there?

I use commas a lot, but that doesn’t mean I know how to. Just when I think I have a fairly good grasp on how to use them I come to a point in a paper where I absolutely do not. When it comes to this I tend to put the comma where it might go and keep writing. I know that commas need to be put in where a pause is needed, a list exists, or where I have put in information that is not vital to the sentence. I can’t think of a specific circumstance where I’ve always had a problem knowing where a comma goes. My problem tends to be that where I think they should go they don’t need to, for instance when I add a pause for effect. I may think the pause is needed but when a friend reads the same sentence or passage they don’t. During English 326 it would be neat if ninety-nine percent of my questions relating to the comma could be erased. I use it so often that to know for certain where they should and should not go would be great.

I have never used semi-colons, except prior to beginning a long list. What is their purpose? Whenever I have wanted to add a pause I may add a period or a comma. In some ways I assume that the semi-colon is related to both the period and the comma but I’m not sure how. In order to become a better writer and as a future teacher, I would like to learn the ins-and-outs of the semi-colon. I don’t want to avoid using it because I don’t know how. In addition, I think that having more variety of punctuation available to me would really make me feel more comfortable as a writer and a teacher who may or may not be asked one day, "how do you use a semi-colon?"

Question: What exactly is the passive voice and when should I avoid using it?