Be More Active with Your Writing

Active and Passive Voice: When you are active, you do something. When you are passive, things happen to you. This is the same concept as the active and passive voice in sentences.

In the active voice, the subject performs the action described by the main verb. In the passive voice, the action described by the main verb is done to the subject.

Example D.1a, active voice: “The service team collected the parts.”
(subject: service team; main verb: collected)
Example D.1b, passive voice: “The parts were collected by the service team.”
(subject: parts; main verb: collected)

In example D.1a, the subject did the action, so the sentence is active. In example D.1b, the action was done to the subject, so the sentence is passive.

To determine whether your sentence is active or passive, first find the subject and main verb. Then ask, “Is the subject doing the verb?” If the answer is Yes, the sentence is active. If the answer is No, the sentence is passive.

If we describe this concept as a formula, we get this:

S >> V = active (the subject does the action)
V >> S = passive (the action is done to the subject)

Grammatically, the active voice looks like this:

Subject – Verb – Object (i.e., Who did what to whom?).

On the other hand, the passive voice uses the object as the subject of the verb, resulting in

Subject&Object – Verb (i.e., To whom was it done?).

By using the object as the grammatical subject, a passive voice sentence makes the information convoluted and complex, and the reader will be less likely to respond to it. Additionally, the meaningful subject will never be the grammatical subject in the passive voice, which means the reader won’t focus on the person or thing doing the action.

In nearly every sentence, the active voice results in more direct writing. However, the passive voice has a purpose, too. Next, we’ll look at the reasons for each voice.

Reasons for Active Voice: The main reason for using the active voice is that it directly answers the readers’ question “Who did what to whom?” which is the unconscious question readers ask of every sentence. A sentence in the active voice provides the desired information and in that order. As a result, the reader can more easily understand and remember the idea you wish to communicate.

Other reasons include the following:

1. The active voice is more likely to use the meaningful subject as the grammatical subject and the meaningful action as the main verb.
2. Sentences in the active voice are more engaging because something is performing an action.
3. Active voice sentences are generally more concise.
4. The active voice emphasizes active verbs, which makes the writing far more interesting and the reader far more likely to keep reading.

In brief, the active voice follows the principles of direct writing.

Reasons for Passive Voice: The passive voice may be appropriate for two reasons:

1. To de-emphasize the person or thing doing the action, and
2. To shorten the grammatical subject.

First, the main reason for using the passive voice is to hide or de-emphasize the meaningful subject. Instead, the passive voice emphasizes the person or thing on which the action was performed, as seen in D.2a and D.2b.

Example D.2a, passive, emphasizes the material: “The material was first developed in the laboratory by researchers from Oslo.”
Example D.2.b, active, emphasizes the researchers: “Researchers from Oslo first developed the material in a laboratory.”

In both D.2a and D.2b, the meaningful action is developed, making researchers the meaningful subject. Whereas the active voice sentence in D.2b uses the meaningful subject as the grammatical subject, the passive voice sentence in D.2a does not. If the writer wishes to focus on the material, and if the researchers are not important (or not at this point in the document), the writer might prefer the passive voice.

Scientific writing, regardless of the field, does not require the passive voice. This also applies to dissertation writing. The active voice is perfectly appropriate for describing the research methodology. The purpose of the research methodology is to describe what the researchers did to collect and analyze the data. Thus, the researchers are correct to use the active voice when describing their actions. Instead of writing

“The data were collected from six species of house sparrows,”

the researcher can write

“We collected data from six species of house sparrows.”

However, in many cases, the writer can revise the sentence to use the active voice without mentioning the researchers, as seen here:

“Six species of house sparrows provided the initial data for analysis.”

Second, the second reason for using the passive voice is to simplify and shorten the subject of the sentence so that the main verb is closer to the beginning of the sentence and easier to find, as seen below.

Example D.3a, active voice sentence: “The decision whether to solicit for and hire a new personnel manager or to outsource those functions to an external agency consumed valuable work time.” (subject: 21 words)

Example D.3b, passive voice sentence: “Valuable work time was consumed by the decision whether to solicit for and hire a new personnel manager or to outsource those functions to an external agency.” (subject: 3 words)

If we remove all the descriptive words from example D.3a, it reads, “The decision consumed time.” Example D.3a uses the meaningful subject (The decision whether to . . .) as the grammatical subject, and it focuses the readers’ attention on the main idea of the sentence. For these reasons, example D.3a is more direct than example D.3b. However, the subject contains 21 words, greatly delaying the reader from reaching the main verb.

If we remove all the descriptive words from example D.3b, it reads, “Time was consumed by the decision” Example D.3b uses the object (Valuable work time) as the grammatical subject, forcing the meaningful subject to the end of the sentence. However, the grammatical subject contains only three words, so the reader can reach the main verb more quickly.

Your Task: Examine every passive voice sentence carefully to make sure it is the better choice. Other than in these two cases, the active voice will generally produce better writing.