Feeling Passive-Aggressive?

“Please revise passive sentences.” “Write in active voice.” If you’ve ever received these or similar comments in a reviewed academic paper, this post is for you! Admit it, were you somewhat perplexed about what your professor’s comment even meant? Well, the good news is that the passive voice problem is fairly easy to remedy, once you get the hang of it. So let me explain what it is, and what to do about it…in layman’s terms.

The Problem

Honestly, academic writing leans toward dullness. Although it reflects brilliant thought and original ideas, it is often expressed in a way that is unpalatable to all but the most devoted readers on a given topic. This is unfortunate. After all, it’s best to display valuable ideas and research in good writing, just as valuable gems are best appreciated when artfully displayed.

Ask yourself: Do I want people to read what I have written? Do I want them to cite my work in their own research? If you answered yes, then for the love of knowledge, read on!

What Is Passive Voice?

One way you can breathe some freshness into your writing is by reducing your use of the passive voice. Passive voice is:

1. The opposite of active voice 😉

2. Best explained through examples

Note: In each example, I’ve made the subject of the sentence bold and underlined the verb. I’ve italicized the object*.

Example #1

Passive:          The class was taught by a civil war veteran.

Active:            A civil war veteran taught the class.

Notice how what was the subject in the passive sentence (class) switches places with the object (veteran) in order to make the active sentence.

What does the switch achieve?

In the passive sentence, the verb (was taught by) is farther away from the person who actually did the teaching (veteran). This weakens the sentence.

In contrast, the stronger, more direct active sentence has the actual actor as the subject (veteran), followed immediately by the verb (taught). Better.

Example #2

Passive:          A heart attack victim has been driven to the hospital by a                                            complete stranger.

Active:            A complete stranger has driven a heart attack victim to the                                            hospital.

What is achieved?

It’s the same switch, but in this case, the passive sentence threw even more words (to the hospital) between the action of driving and the person who did the driving. This weakens the sentence even more.

If It’s So Terrible, Why Does Passive Voice Even Exist?

Note: You should know that sometimes passive sentence constructions are acceptable or even desirable. However, use them sparingly. Here are some reasons you might choose the passive voice:

1. You don’t know who performed the action

Example: An anonymous donation has been given to the foundation.

Obviously, you can’t use the name of the person who gave the donation, since it was anonymous. However, I suppose you could’ve written the sentence thus:

Revision: An anonymous benefactor gave a donation to the foundation.

2. You don’t want to reveal the performer of the action

This little trick of word order is useful for confronting issues with co-workers or subordinates.

Example: Excessive copies have been made this month; this activity must be  curbed moving forward.

If this sentence were active, it would seem accusatory:

Revision: You have made excessive copies this month; you must curb this                                    activity moving forward.

:-/ Not good for office morale.

3. You want to emphasize the object

Example: The posthumous award was accepted by the airman’s widow.

What Should You Do?

You know how teachers often tell their students that there’s no shortcut to learning something well? Well, in this case, that just isn’t true. There is a shortcut, and it’s pretty effective, especially when you’re starting out. Here it is.

The [Not-So-Secret] Shortcut:

If you use Word, run the Spelling and Grammar check from the Tools menu (top of screen), and it will actually point out passive sentences for correction. It will even give you a suggested edit.

This is super handy, and if you’ve never actually tried to revise sentence voice in the past, it’s a quick way of familiarizing yourself with the process. (Confession: I use it, too. I mean, why not? Just because you can spell doesn’t mean you don’t spellcheck your documents, right?)

In general, though, what you are aiming for is for sentences to move from the actor (subject) to the action (verb) without too much verbiage in between.

So when you’re ready to tackle that revision or write your next academic assignment, do yourself a favor by using the tools readily available to you. Make your writing more direct and interesting—choose active voice over passive voice.

*Yes, I know there’s a difference between a direct object and an object of a preposition…settle down…this post is for people who, understandably, probably don’t remember all the details of the parts of the sentence. That primer is for another post.