LEARNING OBJECTIVES

  1. Differentiate between active and passive voice.
  2. Write in active voice.
  3. Know when and how to use passive voice.

Sydney J. Harris, a Chicago journalist, said, “We have not passed that subtle line between childhood and adulthood until we move from the passive voice to the active voice—that is, until we have stopped saying, ‘It got lost,’ and say, ‘I lost it.’” Besides being a rite of passage in human development, routinely using active voice also marks growth in your writing ability.

As a college writer, you need to know when and how to use both active and passive voice. Although active voice is the standard preferred writing style, passive voice is acceptable, and even preferred, in certain situations. However, as a general rule, passive voice tends to be awkward, vague, and wordy.

Recognizing Active and Passive Voice

Lack of awareness or understanding of passive voice may cause you to use it regularly. Once you fully grasp how it differs from active voice, passive voice will begin to stand out. You will then recognize it when you use it as well as when others use it.

To use active voice, you should make the noun that performs the action the subject of the sentence and pair it directly with an action verb.

Read these two sentences:

In the first sentence, “left” is an action verb that is paired with the subject, “Matt Damon.” If you ask yourself “Who or what left?” the answer is “Matt Damon.” Neither of the other two nouns in the sentence—”Harvard” and “career”—left anything.

Now look at the second sentence. The action verb is “started.” If you ask yourself “Who or what started something?” the answer is again “Matt Damon.” But in this sentence, “career” has been placed in the subject position, not “Matt Damon.” When the doer of the action is not in the subject position, the sentence is in passive voice. In passive voice constructions, the doer of the action usually follows the word “by” as the indirect object of a prepositional phrase, and the action verb is typically partnered with a version of the verb “to be.”

Look at the following two passive voice sentences. For each sentence, note the noun in the subject position, the form of the verb “to be,” the action verb, and the doer of the action.

The following video diagrams the differences between active and passive voice:

Active vs. Passive Voice.” Created by Learn English on Skype. License: All Rights Reserved. License Terms: Standard YouTube License ©

Using Action Verbs to Make Sentences More Interesting

Two sentences can generally say the same thing but leave an entirely different impression based on the verb choices. For example, which of the following sentences gives you the most vivid mental picture?

Or

As a rule, try to express yourself with action verbs instead of forms of the verb “to be.” Sometimes it is fine to use forms of the verb “to be,” such as “is” or “are,” but it is easy to overuse them (as in this sentence—twice). Overuse of such verbs results in dull writing.

Read each of the following sentences and note the use of the verb “to be.” In your head, think of a way to reword the sentence to make it more interesting by using an action verb. Then look at how each revision uses one or more action verbs.

Examples

Original: A photo was snapped, the tiger was upset, and Elizabeth was on the ground.

Original: A giraffe’s neck is long and thin, but it is as much as five hundred pounds in weight.

Original: An elephant is able to drink eighty gallons of water and is likely to eat one thousand pounds of vegetation in a day.

Starting sentences with “there is,” “there are,” “there were,” “it is,” or “it was” is another form of passive voice. Read each of the following examples of this kind of passive voice construction. In your head, think of a way to reword the sentence to make it more interesting by using an action verb. Then look at how each sentence can be revised using an action verb.

Examples

Original: There are thousands of butterflies in the Butterfly House.

Original: There were four giraffes eating leaves from the trees.

Using Action Verbs Alone to Avoid Passive Voice

Even though the passive voice might include an action verb, the strength of the action verb is lessened by the structure of the sentence. Also, the passive voice tends to create unnecessary wordiness. Read the following sentences and think of a way to reword each using an action verb in active voice. Then study the suggested revision in each case.

Examples

Original: The zebras were fed by the zoo workers. (eight words)

Original: Water was spewed in the air by the elephant. (nine words)

Original: The home of the hippopotamus was cleaned up and made tidy by Hank the Hippo Man. (sixteen words)

Writing in the Active Voice

Once you understand the difference between active and passive voice, writing in active voice becomes easy. All you have to do is to make sure you clearly explain who or what did what. And if you notice you are using forms of the verb “to be” with your action verb, look closely at the reason. If you are writing in progressive tense (“Carrie is walking to my house”) or perfect progressive tense (“Melissa will have been married for four years by then”), you will need to use such helping verbs, even in active voice. (See Section SB “Sentence Building”, and SB2 “Choosing Appropriate Verb Tenses” for more information on progressive and perfect progressive tenses.)

Using Passive Voice

Sometimes passive voice actually is the best option. The point is to only use passive voice when you consciously decide to do so. Consider the following acceptable uses of passive voice.

When you don’t know who or what is responsible for the action:

When you want to hide the person or thing responsible for the action, such as in a story:

When the person or thing that performed the action is not important:

When you do not want to place credit, responsibility, or blame:

trial.

expose the person.

When you want to maintain the impression of objectivity:

When you want to avoid using a gendered construction and pluralizing is not an option.


Adapted from Chapter 16 “Sentence Style” in Writer’s Handbook v 1.0 used according to Creative Commons CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

Back to: Grammar and Sentence Construction Handbook > Unit 6: Word Choice and Style