Active voice

In our previous writes, we often discouraged the usage of passive voice. But in this article we would see the scenarios when passive voice is the only way. By the end of this article you would realize that passive voice is not a redundant grammar entry, it is just a style to hide non-necessary essentials.

When is passive voice considered to be good?

Sometimes passive voice is the best choice for writing. We will look into few examples when they are useful.

To mask the subject and highlight the object

Let us look into this point under this example.

100 votes are required to pass the bill.

In the above example, the focus is on number of votes rather than the event “bill”. Thus we can successfully emphasize the action. An active statement would read like “The bill requires 100 votes to pass”. This would put less emphasis on bill, making it less dramatic.
To de-emphasize an unknown subject/actor.

Consider this example:

Over 120 different contaminants have been dumped into the river.

In instances like this, when you don’t know the specifics of the actor, such as in this case, you don’t know who dumped all the contaminants in the river. When the knowledge about the actor is non-existent, passive writing helps you in reporting the action without actually stating the actor. But if you know the actor, your clarity and meaning would be benefited.

If your readers don’t need to know who’s responsible for the action.

In this scenario it is quite difficult to opt for the voice usage. Some instances, you deliberately make the sentence passive. This is done to highlight some fact. The catch is, try to put yourself in reader’s position and anticipate his reaction. Here are two examples:

Baby Julie was delivered at 3:30 a.m. yesterday.(passive)

and

Dr. Mark delivered baby Julie at 3:30 a.m. yesterday.(active)

Whereas the first sentence is more apt for the family members or friends, the second sentence is of more import for the hospital report. In first sentence we shift the importance to the baby while in the second the focus is on doctor.

Let us now deal down to strategies which would facilitate the passive voice indication.

Strategies

Identify

• Look for the passive voice: “to be” + a past participle (usually, but not always, ending in “-ed”).
• If you do not see both of them, then discard. Else, does the sentence describe an action? If so, is there an actor? If there is an actor, check if it is in the grammatical subject position.
• Does the sentence end with “by..”? Many passive sentences include the actor at the end of the sentence in a “by” phrase, like “The ball was hit by the player” or “The shoe was chewed up by the dog.” “By” by itself isn’t a conclusive sign of the passive voice, but it is an indefinite indicator for passive voice.

Evaluate

• Is the doer/actor mentioned? Should you mention the doer?
• Does it really matter who’s responsible for the action?
• Are you writing something where a reader should need to know the actor?
• Do you want to emphasize the object?

Rewrite

If you observe that your sentence looks more elegant when written in active voice, switch to active voice.

Related posts:

Frequently Asked Question on Passive Voice – Part 1 Frequently Asked Question on Passive Voice — Part 2 Active voice and passive voice

Continuing with our discussion for the most neglected aspects of passive voice, we would look into other frequently asked questions. Before diving straight into the questions, I would like to point out the importance of this exercise. The whole point of this article is to bring forth the usage of passive voice. Most of the people frown at passive voice because they lack clarity (The subject is not stated specifically). Sometimes this miscommunication can prove vital to some form of writing (academic, legal etc). In such form of writing, every sentence is under scrutiny, hence the need of utmost clarity. Passive voice in such form of writing is easily avoidable.

The passive voice always avoids the usage of first person. If there is citation of first person (I or we) then it is active voice.

We would start with a counter example for this claim. “I was hit by the cricket ball”. In this sentence notice how the grammatical subject is overlapped with the grammatical object, hence the passive voice. But this form still uses the usage of first person. We notice that we can’t directly discard a sentence as active as soon as we encounter the usage of first person.

You should never use passive voice.

Though passive voice often reduces clarity and makes the meaning dubious, it is sometimes preferable. At times it is only appropriate to use passive voice. We will deal with all such cases in the next series of FAQs. Just to cite a small example, passive voice brings the attention to the object, so a sentence like “Mistakes were made.” In the above sentence note that by obscuring the doer of the action; the sentence doesn’t bring the culprit who did the mistake. It merely states that a mistake was made. Sometimes hiding the subject brings parity.

Grammar checker can find passive voice usage.

If you noticed the first point under the discussion in the previous article, you would notice that we discussed how using passive voice is not a grammatical error. So since it is not a grammatical error, it is difficult to catch the error through grammar check tool. It may be erroneous, specifically having dubious actions. Let us look into an example.

Women were not treated as equals

In the above sentence, we see that the above sentence lack precision. A reader would definitely ask with whom were the women compared to here. i.e Women were not treated as equals with men. If you notice now, the example in question would be rendered as careless or lazy writing. So think twice before using passive voice in your writing.

By now, I am sure; you would have appreciated the need for passive writing and its presence in daily world. In the next article we would see when using passive writing is appropriate.

Related posts:

Frequently Asked Question on Passive Voice – Part 1 Frequently Asked Question on Passive Voice  —  Part 3 Active voice and passive voice

We have seen through the usage of active and passive voice in previous posts of this blog. In this article we would address some of the frequently asked questions on passive voice.
Let us start by recapitulating the bare essentials.

Passive voice is used to hide the essential information. Let us see the play of passive voice through various examples.

• This sentence was written yesterday. (But I have no idea who wrote it.)

The message can be even more abbreviated and obtuse:

• This sentence was written. (But by whom, when, and ….?)

Even if we include the missing information, the emphasis is deflected from the issue of who wrote the sentence because the subject of the sentence (the focus of attention) is not “who the author is”. The author (the doer) is almost parenthetical information.

• This sentence was written yesterday by one of my technical people.
• This sentence was written yesterday (by one of my technical people).

Misconceptions/FAQ

Using passive voice is grammatically incorrect:

To answer this question we would start with the definition of passive voice in a different light. A passive voice occurs when the object is superimposed on the subject of the sentence. In other words, whoever or whatever is performing the action is not the grammatical subject of the sentence i.e. mentioned or inferred in the sentence. With this definition you would have realized, how often we face the need of passive voice. Most of the times the subject is inferred but as always a deduced subject will be prone to confusion. Let’s see another example.

• Why was the road crossed by the chicken?

In the above example if you observe carefully, you can see the road is the grammatical subject. Due to this structuring the chicken here becomes the grammatical object. The more familiar way of putting this sentence why did the chicken cross the road? puts the object and the subject at their respective places. We use active verbs to represent that “doing,” whether it is crossing roads, proposing ideas, making arguments, or invading houses. You would have seen by now, how usage of passive voice is just a mere extension of saying things indirectly. It is just a stylistic issue which pertains to clarity.

Usage of “to be” makes the sentence passive:

There is a golden rule to identify passive voice.

form of “to be” + past participle = passive voice

The passive voice is much more than using a verb. It’s about representation of thoughts from clarity perspective. If you notice carefully the above formula, you would notice that identifying “to be” and a past participle would definitely make the sentence passive. But using “to be” can curtail the flow of writing and certainly make the write a lot less impactful. But you should remember “to be” does not by itself constitute the passive voice, it is occasionally necessary. Not every sentence that contains a form of “have” or “be” is passive!

We have by now looked into few of the misconceptions related to passive voice. In the next article we would look into few other FAQs.

Related posts:

Frequently Asked Question on Passive Voice  —  Part 3 Frequently Asked Question on Passive Voice — Part 2 Active voice and passive voice