27 Aug 2002
For fifty years, writing instructors have redlined students' essays with notes saying "Use active voice." Many stylebooks mention passive voice only to proscribe it. More recently, computerized grammar checkers, most notably Microsoft Word, have included warnings against the use of the passive voice.

Examples:
(Passive) "The ball was hit by Tom."
(Active) "Tom hit the ball."

(Passive) "I was told that the meeting was at ten o'clock."
(Active) "Johnson told me that the meeting was at ten o'clock."

In each case, the active voice is more direct.
The active voice has fewer words in the first example; in the second, it has more information.
The usual loss of directness in the passive voice is one reason for recommendations that the passive voice not be used at all. Another is the massive overuse of passive voice, particularly in résumés and undergraduate essays.

Nevertheless, the passive voice can be used effectively.
Consider this example:
(Passive) "Jim was beaten and robbed."
To make this active, we must provide a subject:
(Active) "George beat and robbed Jim."
This is not necessarily an improvement. If, as would seem likely, the speaker is more interested in Jim than in Jim's attacker, then the passive voice is more direct. If the speaker doesn't know who attacked Jim, then the active voice is even less direct, as follows:
(Active) "Someone beat and robbed Jim." Or: "An unknown assailant beat and robbed Jim."

Using a more complicated example, the active voice is even less of an improvement:
(Passive) "On his way home, Jim was beaten and robbed."
(Active) "Someone beat and robbed Jim while Jim was on his way home."

Rule: Use passive voice when the receiver of the action, rather than the actor, is the item of interest in the sentence.
I.e., the subject of a sentence should be the item of interest.

As a final illustration, there certainly is no improvement in using active voice in the following:
(Passive) "He was tried, sentenced, and hanged"
(Active) "The jury tried him, the judge sentenced him, and the hangman hanged him."

- Andrew Hadley

© 2002 Halway Systems

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