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Ten Things You Need to Know About the Passive Voice

WRITE STRONGYou were probably taught back in middle school to avoid the passive voice at all costs. The passive voice, our textbooks said, would make our sentences weak and awkward. Its evasiveness would dilute their clarity and muddy the relationship between doer and action, between cause and effect. Plus it’s … passive, with all that word’s broader negative connotations. No one wants her personality, or her prose, to be passive. Right?

Yes and no. Your personality is your own business, of course, but the passive voice can actually do your prose a lot of good, when used in the right circumstances. (When used in the wrong circumstances … well, we’ll get to that.)

THE POSITIVES OF PASSIVE

I

When the doer is obvious or irrelevant. Who will prosecute you, if you get caught with a Hello Kitty selfie stick in your pocket? The Sharper Image? The assistant DA? Matlock? Who cares? This sentence serves up a solid one-two punch: SHOPLIFTERS! PROSECUTED!

That’s all you need to know.

THE POSITIVES OF PASSIVE

USE THE PASSIVE VOICE:

Shoplifters will be

prosecuted.

II

When the object of the action is what you really care about. One critique of the passive voice is that it deflects attention from the doer of the action, which in the active voice would be the subject of the sentence. But sometimes, your focus is on the object of the action — so it gets center stage.

You could make this sentence active by flipping it around (Generations of students praised and censured Miss Brodie) or changing the verb (Miss Brodie received praise and censure from generations of students), but neither option improves the sentence nor delivers the same meaning as the first.

THE POSITIVES OF PASSIVE

USE THE PASSIVE VOICE:

Miss Brodie, a legendary teacher, was both praised and censured by generations of students.

III

When you want to emphasize that the object is the recipient of the action.That middle-school textbook told you that the passive voice imparts a sense of weakness — passivity, in fact — to your prose. But sometimes that’s exactly what you want.

If your main characters are on that little ship, readers need to feel their sense of helplessness, of being at the mercy of something vastly overpowering. The passive voice does that. You could flip the sentence around to make it active (The raging sea battered the little ship mercilessly) — but only if your story is actually about the raging sea.

THE POSITIVES OF PASSIVE

USE THE PASSIVE VOICE:

The little ship was

battered

mercilessly by the r

aging

sea.

IV

When you need to maintain the flow of your prose. Prose often flows much better if, from one sentence to the next, you’re leading with subjects that have already been introduced. The passive voice can help you do this.

If you flip all of these around to give each sentence the active voice, the same information is there, but the prose feels jerky. It doesn’t flow, because each sentence is springing a previously unknown subject upon us.

THE POSITIVES OF PASSIVE

USE THE PASSIVE VOICE:

The park was recently

renovated by a team of

volunteers. They were

inspired by the Hanging

Gardens of Babylon.

V

When the doer of the action is unknown … right?If you don’t know who did the action you’re describing, you can use the passive voice. But an unknown doer doesn’t automatically call for the passive voice. You still have to ask yourself where you want the reader’s attention to be.

The first sentence is about the statue, the second is about crime and the police. Which is best? It depends on which story you want to tell.

THE POSITIVES OF PASSIVE

USE THE PASSIVE VOICE:

The statue has been vandalized several times this year alone, but no suspects have been identified.

Vandalism is a growing problem — a downtown statue has been targeted several times this year alone, but the police have been unable to identify a single suspect.

THE PITFALLS OF PASSIVE

VI

It can become clumsy, wordy, and awkward.When the passive voice isn’t doing good work, it isn’t just sitting there — contrary to its name. It’s adding words, putting phrases in unexpected places, and making the reader slog through the sentence with a machete to find its meaning.

THE PITFALLS OF PASSIVE

WHAT CAN HAPPEN TO A GOOD SENTENCE WHEN YOU WRITE IN THE PASSIVE VOICE:

Despite having the car detailed by a professional cleaning crew, the driver still received negative feedback from his girlfriend.

VII

Its clarity can be diluted and its meaning obscured.The passive voice often carries a lot of baggage; in the passage to the left, the baggage is almost entirely obscuring the meaning. If you get rid of most of the passive verbs, much of the baggage falls away.

If the decision rendered by

the committee is considered

by a sufficiently significant

proportion of those who

have been selected to give

feedback to have been made

without due attention to

the priorities stated by

the larger group, it may be

determined that a second

deliberation period will

be established in order

to ensure that the input

of all has been fully

incorporated into the

decision-making process.

THE PITFALLS OF PASSIVE

WHAT CAN HAPPEN TO A GOOD SENTENCE WHEN YOU WRITE IN THE PASSIVE VOICE:

VIII

It can become sickly and weak.Let’s take a really strong sentence and see how much life the passive voice can suck out of it.

You might say that no one would ever write the second sentence, and you’d probably be right. But what this example illustrates is that even if the action described in the sentence is exactly the same — and is violent and intense — the passive voice can still leach the narrative power out of it.

Sometimes, though, the passive voice isn’t itself the problem but merely the symptom. Writing can have much bigger problems than being weak, wordy and unclear, as we’ll see on the next page.

“You’ll pay for this,” he

said, pointing at me, and

spat in my face.

I was told, “This will be

paid for by you,” while

being pointed at by him;

then my face was spat in

by him.

THE PITFALLS OF PASSIVE

WHAT CAN HAPPEN TO A GOOD SENTENCE WHEN YOU WRITE IN THE PASSIVE VOICE:

IX

It’s living in an apocalyptic wasteland.The passive voice here is a symptom of something terrible that happened to this passage before the passive or active got anywhere near it: Someone decided that this prose, being in some way “official,” just shouldn’t have any people in it. Why some think that this somehow makes their writing seem more formal or impressive is another question. But as this passage shows, if you lose the people you lose the meaning.

In this case, the elimination of people is a style choice. It’s even worse when it’s because…

Decisions regarding consequences will be rendered within 72 hours and communicated via singing telegram. Exceptions may be made when adequate justification has been presented and approved.

THE PITFALLS OF PASSIVE

WHAT THE PASSIVE VOICE CAN INDICATE ABOUT A SENTENCE:

X

You’ve got something to hide.One of the most infamous uses of the passive voice, made instantly legendary by a politician. Clearly the speaker wanted to skip over the question of who made those mistakes. But in skipping over it, he drew a big circle around it with a red arrow pointing to it. Most people’s immediate reaction upon hearing that statement was “They were?! Who made them? Who? It must have been someone! I bet it was YOU!”

If you’re going to rob a bank, don’t strut in there with a big canvas bag marked with a dollar sign. And if you’re going to hide your sins, don’t hide them under the passive voice. It’s a dead giveaway.

Mistakes were made.

THE PITFALLS OF PASSIVE

WHAT THE PASSIVE VOICE CAN INDICATE ABOUT A SENTENCE:

READ MOREThe passive voice isn’t inherently good or bad. It’s a tool you can use to make your prose serve your objectives. If you use it, or avoid it, unnecessarily or without thought, bad prose will be written. By you.

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