The (Anxious) Active vs Passive Voice Page:
You will recall, that sentences contain subjects which is what the sentence is about, and predicates which describe what the subject does.
Phyllis gave Harry a loving tap with an anvil.
Here you've got a sentence about Phyllis and what she did to Harry.
The subject is "Phyllis" because the sentence is about her.
The predicate is the rest of the sentence.
The verb is "gave" because that's what Phyllis did.
We say that the verb is in the "active" voice because the subject is doing something active.
But watch this trick:
Harry was given a loving tap with an anvil.
All of a sudden the sentence is about Harry!
Only he hasn't done anything!
He's just standing there getting smacked with an anvil.
What a wuss!
The verb "was given" does not say what Harry did, it says what was done to Harry.
This verb we call "passive" voice because the subject passively received the action.
Which sentence do you like better?
If you want to write in ways that are most clear and interesting, avoid the passive voice and stick to the active voice.
I know, it's a judgment call, and who am I to tell you one is gooder than the other.
There may be times when you prefer to choose the passive voice.
Abraham Lincoln sure did in his Gettysburg Address.
But at least know enough to make a choice and not just out of habit.
And
don't give in, even if your word processor grammar program yells at
you. Run Lincoln's speech through the grammar program and you'll see
how, arguably, the greatest speech ever made by an American president
gets put down.
There are a couple of places where the passive voice may be preferred.
One is when writing for psychological journals, or for teachers of psychology classes.
They love the passive voice!
They
love it for the same reason I claim it weakens the writing; they love
it because the passive voice tends to communicate relatively little
feeling, and psychology writers try very hard to be objective.
They like the distance created with the passive voice.
Take another look at the second sentence.
You should notice that it is a complete sentence without having to name the guilty party.
You could say, "Harry was given a loving tap with an anvil by Phyllis."
But naming Phyllis isn't absolutely necessary.
When you'd like to avoid saying who is responsible, the passive voice allows you to do just that.
You'll
find the passive voice a lot in various government agencies and large
companies or other places where the responsible person may just as soon
not be known.
Mistakes were made.
Oh, yeah? Who made them? Huh? Who?
Of course, sometimes we really don't know who did the deed.
The victim was stabbed forty seven times with a sharpened pork chop.
It's a good way to begin a cop show on TV.
We've got the next half hour to an hour to find out enough information to rewrite the sentence into good strong active voice:
A
deranged pig, angry about his brothers and sisters being eaten, stabbed
the victim forty seven times with a sharpened pork chop.
Case solved!
In Standard English there is no hard and fast rule about active vs passive voice.
Your job as a writer is to make your writing as clear as you are able.
And as engaging.
Most often this means the active voice.
Passive voice will be written when necessary. (ha-ha)
To return to Step Two, click here.
