Passive & Active Voice
Why is it that people laud active voice while passive voice is derided? Is it a rule or preference to favour one over the other? To put it simply, if there wasn’t a use for a particular style, it wouldn’t exist, so let’s examine these more closely.
In this post:
What are active and passive voice?
So why is passive voice so vilified?
Can I use passive voice?
What are active and passive voice?
Active voice describes when the subject is the one doing the action in a clause. I would contend it’s what most people think of when they imagine clause construction, since we’re usually taught this order:
Subject > Verb > Object (e.g., “So-and-so does this.”)
Conversely, a clause or sentence is passive when the object, the entity being acted upon, is the focus rather than the subject.
You might have noticed that the very first sentence in this blog post contains both active and passive voice:
Active: “people laud active voice”
Passive: “passive voice is derided”
The former is active because the subject—the people—are clearly acting. They are the ones lauding the object.
In the latter clause, you can tell the construction is passive because “passive voice is derided” read alone does not demonstrate who is doing the deriding. The object, in this case passive voice, is simply a target for the derision of a mysterious subject (or at least it would be mysterious if we hadn’t already identified “people” as the actor, but more on that later).
Were the sentence written completely in active voice, we could say, “Why is it that people laud active voice and deride passive voice?” In passive, it could be, “Why is it that active voice is lauded and passive voice is derided?”
So why is passive voice so vilified?
Considering how much more space we need to define passive voice versus active, it’s no wonder that it can be the cause of much confusion.
Like I said, we generally learn Subject > Verb > Object order when we’re first learning English. This is because it’s the easiest and most straightforward clause construction. But, since there’s more nuance to passive voice, writers may be more likely to use it improperly, making their writing sound overly complicated or sloppy. Active voice tends to be more to the point and therefore easier for readers to follow. As in the previous example, you’re often left wondering who the main actor is because they’re not identified.
Additionally, though there is nothing inherently wrong with passive voice, it can make whatever or whomever you’re describing look unintentionally weak, similarly to how we might view a character who never takes initiative and is only ever reacting to events. Passive voice can even make the writing itself look weak. If you were to write an academic essay, too much passive voice could make you sound hesitant or unsure. Active voice tends to make for a more authoritative narrator.
Compare the difference between, “In the study it was noted…” with, “The researchers noted…” It’s subtle in this example, but if every sentence is constructed this way, you might think the author is constantly hedging their bets.
Can I use passive voice?
Of course! I said it before—we wouldn’t have it if there wasn’t a use for it. Take the above segment as more of a cautionary tale. If overused, or used incorrectly, passive voice can harm the integrity of your message. But, when used sparingly and appropriately, passive voice can benefit your writing.
Here are some of the conditions and situations in which passive voice can be used for good:
When everyone knows who the actor is
If the person or thing responsible for the action in a clause is already clear and defined from a previous clause, using passive voice isn’t likely to confuse an audience.
If you’re trying to use passive voice to avoid giving away a particular detail (i.e., who the actor is), you may want to rethink how you present the information. Being too coy can come across as amateurish. There are better ways to create a sense of mystery.
To break up active voice
As I’ve previously written about, when crafting sentences as part of a larger whole, variety is a cure for monotony. If you’ve written in a lot of active voice already, throwing in the occasional passive voice is fine, so long as you satisfy the condition above. Take a look at some of your past writing; you’re probably doing this naturally anyway.
To portray someone or something as weak
Guess what? Sometimes we want something to sound weak or, you know, passive. Consider the sentence, “Timmy was carried up the stairs by his father.”* Here Timmy’s father is responsible for the action while we can safely assume that Timmy is just going along with it (or maybe he’s kicking and screaming, but that’s another matter).
*Hold on—I thought we can never tell who the actor is in passive voice? Well, not exactly. Here’s a wrench: sometimes the subject does appear in the clause, but is preceded by the object, which is still the true focal point. You can often spot this type of passive construction when a qualifying word like “by” comes between object and subject.
To help with perspective consistency
In keeping with the previous example, if we’ve thus far only been following Timmy’s perspective, passive voice can also help keep the perspective from shifting too much toward his father.
To keep references clear
Sounds a bit nit-picky, but using an active version like, “Timmy’s father carried him up the stairs,” might actually introduce unintended consequences in this example. Who are we referring to when we say “him”? Is it Timmy? His father? Some other third person? Even though “Timmy’s father” is clearly the subject here, that doesn’t have any bearing on the identity of the object.
An alternative solution, “Timmy’s father carried Timmy up the stairs,” would be technically fine to use, if considerably less elegant.
All that aside, I do hope this is a good starting point to play around with active and passive voice in your writing. Take both for a spin and see if you can determine what works best for each situation. You might be surprised by what you can come up with.
Mary Kehoe provides structural, stylistic and copy editing services for a variety of written works through her agency, Elixir Editorial. From time to time she dabbles in her own writing projects which tend toward the speculative genre.
She is a member of both Editors Canada and the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), as well as a founding member and former chair of the Toronto Arts & Letters Club writing group. A longtime lover of the English language, Mary is passionate about supporting writers on the journey to inspire the world.
