Passive and Active Voice

The use of active and passive voice is a tricky area for even the best writers, as rules lack clarity and do not necessarily need to be followed. While active voice takes preference over passive for many reasons, moments still exist where passive voice works better. One of the best ways to begin mastering the two voices is to gain a complete understanding of how each voice works, how they affect the audience’s understanding of the information presented, and where they best fit.

With the active voice the subject performs the action expressed in the verb. For example “the dog bit the boy,” “Jake will research his topic,” “smelling roses reminds me of my grandmother.” By the subject of the sentence performing the action expressed in the verb, sentences are clearer and more direct, cutting out confusion and boredom for readers.

Passive voice, on the other hand, occurs when the subject receives the action expressed in the verb, and the subject is acted upon. Examples of this are “the boy was bitten by the dog,” “Jake will be researching his topic,” and “smelling roses has been reminding me of my grandmother.” Overuse of this sentence structure creates awkward sentences and can lead to confusion of subjects and action, and eventually cause the audience to lose interest in what the writing says.

While the active voice is recommended, there are moments to which passive voice can actually work to a writer’s advantage. This tense allows personal pronouns and names to be omitted, distracting the attention of the reader away from the subject. Therefore fingers are not pointed, and who or whatever that carries out the action becomes unimportant.

Although exceptions can be made for passive voice, it is still important to watch out for the overuse of this complicating tense and strive to use the more straightforward active voice. A great way to edit through a piece of writing to diminish unnecessary passive verbs is to search for any “to be” words. These include “is,” “was,” “were,” “could be,” “will be,” among many others combined with a past participle. Once you find a sentence involving the past tense, switch the structure around and see if the active voice fits. More likely than not it will, but if it doesn’t fit then the passive voice is needed to convey whatever message the writer intends.




Goals: The goal of this piece is to demonstrate the difference between passive and active voice, to describe the best uses of both, and to give advice on how to edit these tenses.
Audience: The audience is that of the class and that of anyone who has trouble keeping their tenses straight and are interested in working on their problem. This definitely includes myself, as I know I need to work on this, and researching the topic is one of the best ways to learn.
Accomplishing goals: I'm accomplishing these goals by describing each tense and giving examples of what each means and how they are constructed. I then explain when it is best to use each, and give examples on how to edit and look for mistakes with passive and active voice.