Active/Passive Voice

Inexperienced writers are sometimes confused about whether to use active or passive voice. Basically, active voice focuses attention on the subject or doer of the action, while passive voice focuses attention on the receiver of the action.

Active voice: John gave me the book.

Passive voice: The book was given to my by John.

When to use active or passive voice is not an easy question because the answer depends on style guide, purpose, and audience.

Sometimes writers use passive voice to avoid taking or assigning responsibility. "Honey, the car was dented" is much less indicting than "Honey, I dented the car."

Some high school teachers tell students to never use passive voice. For creative and personal writing, that is good advice because, generally, overuse of passive voice creates wordy, bland writing.

However, many scientific articles use passive voice extensively to focus on findings and conclusions of research. Some use active voice in different sections, such as introduction, methodology, and discussion, but use passive in the abstract, findings, and conclusions sections.

Some style guides warn against excessive use of first person "I," "me," and "my" in academic and professional writing. That leads many writers to use passive voice by default. A better solution is to use phrases like "research shows," "studies demonstrate," or "experiments reveal."

Sometimes social science writing uses passive voice to model science writing. That affectation is not nearly as common now as it was 50 years ago, when William Fowler labeled the practice "sociologese." When it is used, however, it results in difficult reading, designed mostly to impress instead of communicate.

Some examples for discussion are listed below. Look carefully at how active and passive voice are used in various publications. Take notes and discuss what you find in your editing group. Be prepared to present your findings to the class.

Examples

Exercises