Passive Voice: A Good Time Had by All
Active voice is preferred for the majority of your writing, but let’s examine how to recognize passive voice, how to avoid it, and when it works.
RECOGNIZE
Active voice is the standard sentence construction we know and love: Subject + Verb + Complete Thought. Passive voice is a sentence whose subject is unclear or comes at the end of the sentence. With passive voice, the object of the sentence starts the sentence, the verb construction uses the past participle of the main verb, and the subject may be missing or appears at the end of the sentence as the object of a preposition.
One concern with passive voice is that the construction is wordy or unclear. Here’s the famous “good time” example:
Passive voice: A good time was had by all. [Object + helping verb and past participle of main verb + subject serving as the object of the preposition]
Active voice: We had a good time.
The biggest concern with the passive-voice sentence above is its wordiness. Why not be succinct with the active voice?
Another problem with passive voice is that the subject is often missing or is unclear. This happens often in technology documentation, making the readers wonder if they should be doing the action or the technology is doing the action.
Passive voice: After the system boots up, a report is run.
Active voice: After the system boots up, the new feature runs the report.
Passive voice: The yarn is threaded through the hole in the needle.
Active voice: Thread the yarn through the hole in the needle. [The subject “you” is understood.]
The lack of subject in the first passive-voice sentence above makes the reader wonder who or what is running the report. In the second example, we can assume the subject is “you,” but if this instruction comes with an automatic yarn-threading machine, it is unclear. Clarity is king, so put yourself in the mind of the reader.
And be careful not to use passive voice simply to shirk blame:
Passive: New policies were enacted.
Active: Our company enacted new policies.
AVOID
The simplest way to avoid passive voice is to find the verb and figure out who or what is doing the action:
Passive voice: The pencils were placed in the cup.
Active voice: I [you, he, she, we, they] placed the pencils in the cup.
USE
Don’t tell your tenth-grade English teacher, but sometimes, passive voice is better than the active-voice version. Occasional passive voice provides sentence-structure variety in a long paragraph; just make sure the subject is clear! Another time to use passive voice is when the object is more important than the subject:
Active voice: Someone shot President Kennedy.
Passive voice: “President Kennedy’s been shot.” –Walter Cronkite
In addition to the fact that the president was more important than the assassin and should be at the start of the sentence, Cronkite did not know who the killer was.
As always, please let me know what you think, or give me some new grammar topics to cover, in the comments below.
I had so much fun at the Pocono Liars Club Author Expo last month, and I got to read again. Whoo hoo. (I’m beginning to enjoy that as much as the writing!)
And Merry Christmas in July. The e-book of Midnight Clear at Christmas is free for five days starting July 23.
Top photo by Samantha Gades on Unsplash