What is the passive voice?

In general, the active voice makes your writing stronger, more direct, and, you
guessed it, more active. The subject is something, or it does the action of the verb
in the sentence. With the passive voice, the subject is acted upon by some other
performer of the verb. (In case you weren’t paying attention, the previous two
sentences use the type of voice they describe.)

But the passive voice is not incorrect. In fact, there are times when it can come in
handy. Read on to learn how to form the active and passive voices, when using the
passive voice is a good idea, and how to avoid confusing it with similar forms.

The difference between active and passive voice

While tense is all about time references, voice describes whether the grammatical
subject of a clause performs or receives the action of the verb. Here’s the formula
for the active voice: [subject]+[verb (performed by the subject)]+[optional object]

Example: Chester kicked the ball.

In a passive voice construction, the grammatical subject of the clause receives the
action of the verb. So, the ball from the above sentence, which is receiving the
action, becomes the subject. The formula: [subject]+[some form of the verb to be]+
[past participle of a transitive verb]+[optional prepositional phrase]

Example: The ball was kicked by Chester.

That last little bit—“by Chester”—is a prepositional phrase that tells you who the
performer of the action is. But even though Chester is the one doing the kicking,
he’s no longer the grammatical subject. A passive voice construction can even
drop him from the sentence entirely:

Example: The ball was kicked.

How’s that for anticlimactic?

When (and when not) to use the passive voice

If you’re writing anything with a definitive subject who’s performing an action, you’ll
be better off using the active voice. And if you search your document for instances
of was, is, or were and your page lights up with instances of passive voice, it may
be a good idea to switch to active voice.
That said, there are times when the passive voice does a better job of presenting
an idea, especially in certain formal, professional, and legal discussions. Here are
three common uses of the passive voice:

1 Reports of crimes or incidents with unknown perpetrators

Example: My car was stolen yesterday.

If you knew who stole the car, it probably wouldn’t be as big a problem. The
passive voice emphasizes the stolen item and the action of theft.

2 Scientific contexts

Example: The rat was placed into a T-shaped maze.

Who places the rat into the maze? Scientists, duh. But that’s less important than
the experiment they’re conducting. Therefore, passive voice.

3 When you want to emphasize an action itself and the doer of the action is
irrelevant or distracting:

Example: The president was sworn in on a cold January morning.

How many people can remember off the top of their heads who swears in
presidents? Clearly the occasion of swearing in the commander in chief is the thing
to emphasize here. In each of the above contexts, the action itself—or the person
or thing receiving the action—is the part that matters. That means the performer of
the action can appear in a prepositional phrase or be absent from the sentence
altogether.

Creative ways to use the passive voice in writing

The above examples show some formal uses of the passive voice, but some
writers take advantage of the shift in emphasis it provides for other reasons. Here
are moments when the passive voice is a stylistic decision that suits the author’s
writing goals.
 1 Avoid getting blamed There are times when you want to get away with
something without making it crystal-clear who’s at fault. The classic example:

Example: “Mistakes were made.” —most politicians

Who made them? Is anyone taking responsibility? What’s the solution here? One
political scientist dubbed this structure the “past exonerative” because it’s meant to
exonerate a speaker from whatever foul they may have committed. In other words,
drop the subject, get off the hook.

2 Beat around the bush

Jane Austen is a master of poking fun at her characters so euphemistically that it

seems almost polite, and the passive voice is one of her favorite methods for doing
that.

Example: “[He] pressed them so cordially to dine at Barton Park every

day till they were better settled at home that, though his
entreaties were carried to a point of perseverance beyond
civility, they could not give offense.” —Jane Austen, Sense
and Sensibility

Austen could have rephrased this sentence like so:

“Though Mr. Middleton carried his entreaties to a point of perseverance beyond

civility, they could not give offense.”

Though maybe she means something closer to:

“Mr. Middleton pushed his invitations beyond the point of politeness and into
pushiness, but he still meant well.”

In cases like this, the passive voice allows for more polite phrasing, even if it’s also
a little less clear.

3 Make your reader pay more attention to the something

This is like the president getting sworn in: the thing that gets the action of the verb
is more important than the people performing the action.
Example: “That treasure lying in its bed of coral, and the corpse of the
commander floating sideways on the bridge, were evoked by
historians as an emblem of the city drowned in memories.” —
Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

Here, you could invert the sentence to say “Historians evoked that treasure (and so
on).” But that would take the focus away from that oh-so-intriguing treasure and the
corpse. And since the historians are less important here, the author makes the
choice to stress the key idea of the sentence through the passive voice.

Here’s another famous example that puts the emphasis on what happens to the
subject, instead of on what the subject is doing:

Example: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are
created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with
certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty
and the pursuit of Happiness.” —The Declaration of
Independence, 1776

“All men” (and these days, women, too) get boosted to the front of the phrase
because their equality and rights are the focus. It makes sense that a statement
declaring independence would focus on the people who get that independence,
after all.

So writers use it. Can you?

The above examples lean toward the literary side of things, but don’t forget that
there are times when the passive voice is useful and necessary in daily life. In each
of the sentences below, the passive voice is natural and clear. Rewriting these
sentences in the active voice renders them sterile, awkward, or syntactically
contorted. Passive: Bob Dylan was injured in a motorcycle accident. Active: A
motorcycle accident injured Bob Dylan. Passive: Elvis is rumored to be alive.
Active: People rumor Elvis to be alive. Passive: Don’t be fooled! Active: Don’t
allow anything to fool you!

Passive voice misuse

Sometimes what looks like passive voice isn’t passive voice at all. If you’re not
careful, even the most careful eye can mistake the following sentences for passive
voice.
Example: Chester’s favorite activity is kicking. The bank robbery took
place just before closing time. There is nothing we can do
about it. There were a great number of dead leaves covering
the ground.

Despite what any well-meaning English teachers may have told you, none of the
sentences above are written in the passive voice. The sentence about the leaves,
in fact, was (wrongly) presented as an example of the passive voice by none other
than Strunk and White in The Elements of Style. Here’s how to remember: using
the verb to be doesn’t automatically put a verb phrase into the passive voice. You
also need a past participle. That’s how to keep passive voice masqueraders from
fooling you.