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Choosing Active Passive Voice Writing

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15 views

Choosing Active Passive Voice Writing

Uploaded by

judys7660
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Active & Passive Voice

This document is an instructional guide on the use of active and passive voice in your written
work. Knowing how and when to use active or passive voice will help to ensure that you are
producing high quality and impactful written documents.

The Basics
Active voice: the sentence has a subject that acts upon its verb
Passive voice: the subject is the recipient of verb’s action
In most cases, you should be using active voice because it creates sentences that are strong,
direct and clear. However, there are certain cases where passive voice is preferred such as:

• To emphasize the action rather than the subject


• To be tactful in not naming the subject
• To describe a state in which the subject is unknown
• To create an authoritative tone

Quick Tip
Both active and passive voice are grammatically correct. However, it is preferable to use active
voice more regularly as it conveys a strong, clear tone. A simple way to convert a sentence from
passive voice to the active voice is by identifying the subject and determining where it is placed
in the sentence.

The following examples illustrate how to choose whether to use active or passive voice.

Example #1
Active: Sally produced the report.
Passive: The report was produced by Sally.
In this very basic example, we can see that the active voice is the better choice. The sentence
is simpler and more direct. It highlights that the subject (Sally) acted on the object (the report),
rather than the other way around.
Example #2
Active: Someone postponed the Town Hall last week.
Passive: The Town Hall was postponed last week.
In this example, we do not know who postponed the Town Hall so it is appropriate to use the
passive voice. In addition, we want to emphasize the action (Town Hall being postponed) rather
than the actor (someone postponing).

Example #3
Active: This comparison of smoking cessation programs in the E.U., Australia, and the U.S.
demonstrates that the percentage of successful quitters can change significantly depending on
which approach is used.
Passive: In this comparison of smoking cessation programs in the E.U., Australia, and the U.S.,
it is demonstrated that the percentage of successful quitters can change significantly depending
on which approach is used.

In this example, the difference is subtle but the effect is significant. The active voice is cleaner,
clearer and more concise. It conveys directly what the authors have contributed in their article.

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