18 Passive Voice

I’ve started this chapter with a short description of my brother’s job as a school principal to illustrate a common stylistic issue in writing. Perhaps, as you read the text in the box above, you found it awkward or confusing. For example, who plays games at recess?

The reason the passage is difficult (or even irritating) to read has to do with the way I’ve built the sentences. These sentences employ something called the passive voice.

What is ‘Voice’?

When we talk about voice, we’re talking about verbs (actions) — who is doing them, and who is receiving them (ie., who are they happening to). We’re going to discuss two voices: active and passive.

Active Voice

In the active voice, the subject of the sentence does the action.

Marie throws the ball very hard.

Throws is the action in the sentence, and the subject — Marie — is the one who does it.

Most sentences in English follow this pattern. It tends to be clearer and more efficient.

Passive Voice

In the passive voice, the subject of the sentence receives the action (ie., the action happens to the subject).

The ball was thrown very hard by Marie.

The ball was thrown very hard.

This time the action is captured with the verb was thrown, and the subject — ball — is the thing the action happens to. We don’t find out who did the action until the end of the sentence, if at all.

Active Voice is Better — Usually

Generally speaking, the active voice is preferred for a few reasons, which I’ll demonstrate here.

Reason 1: It’s More Efficient

When we write, we want to communicate clearly and efficiently — no wasted words. Active voice produces shorter, more efficient sentences, as we can see by comparing the two sentences below:

ACTIVE:   Marie throws the ball very hard.

PASSIVE:  The ball was thrown very bard by Marie.

Notice the underlined portions: I have to change the verb in passive voice — a helping verb is needed now — and I also have to add a preposition by in order to explain who did the action. Those extra words make the sentence longer than it needs to be.

Reason 2: It’s Clearer

Readers like to understand “who is doing what.” Passive voice makes that harder to understand because in the passive voice, you don’t need to mention the person doing the action.

Remember that a sentence must have a subject and a verb in it. In the active voice, the subject is the person/thing doing the action, so we can’t leave it out. I can’t walk up to someone and say, “Slurped her soup.” That’s not a sentence; there’s no subject.

But in the passive voice, the subject is the person/thing who receives the action. The person/thing who does the action is just extra information.

So while I can’t write “Slurped her soup,” I can say, “Her soup was slurped.” That’s a sentence: soup is the subject and was slurped is the verb.

Just because it’s grammatically correct, though, doesn’t mean it’s clear. Do we know who slurped the soup? No, we don’t. Passive voice allows me to leave that part out.

So generally speaking, the active voice makes things easier on readers because it clarifies “who is doing what.”

Identifying Passive Voice

Finding passive voice in your own writing is really easy if you follow a trick invented by Dr. Rebecca Johnson, a professor at US Marine Corps University. It’s called the zombie test.

All you have to do to check for passive voice is to find the main action verb in your sentence and insert the phrase “by zombies” after it. If the sentence still sounds like a sentence, then you’re using passive voice. Let me show you an example.

All the blankets on my bed were washed.

Okay, so I found the action verb; it’s washed. Now I’m going to add the phrase “by zombies” after the verb, to get this:

All the blankets on my bed were washed by zombies.

Read the sentence out loud. It’s a pretty strange image, zombies doing laundry, but it sounds like a sentence to me. That means the sentence is in passive voice.

Now let’s take a look at another example to see what it will sound like if the sentence is written in active voice.

My puppy ate all his food.

Once again I’ll find the action verb and place the phrase “by zombies” afterward, to get this:

My puppy ate by zombies all his food.

Read that sentence out loud, and I think you’ll find that it sounds “wrong.” That means the sentence is in active voice.

Another Method for Identifying Voice

If you don’t want to use the Zombie Test, you can identify passive voice with a simple process.

1. Locate the main verb in the sentence and then look to the left of the verb (ie., the words in the sentence that come before the verb).
   • If you see the person/thing that does the action, the sentence is in active voice.
   • If you see the person/thing that receives the action, then the sentence is in passive voice.

Passive Voice Isn’t Necessarily Bad

It’s not a grammatical error. We need passive voice in certain circumstances; as a writer, you just want to make sure you’re using it in situations where it’s beneficial. Here are a few of those situations.

When you’re not sure who did the action

If you don’t know who did something, you can’t really name them, so you might use passive voice.

A birthday card was left on my desk.

When it doesn’t matter who the actor is, or it would be awkward to name them.

Sometimes naming the actor(s) would make a sentence unnecessarily long. Let’s take the following passive voice sentence as an example.

Daphne Blake Public School was built in 1969.

Based on the sentence, we don’t know who built the school, but do we need to? And if we were to name all the people involved, wouldn’t that make the sentence really long? It’s better to use passive voice here. That sentence delivers the key message clearly and efficiently.

When you want to keep the focus on the receiver of the action

In some cases, the actor is not really the most important part of the message of a sentence. For example, let’s say I’m going to tell my wife some news about my friend Tim, who has injured himself recently. I could report the news in the active voice like this:

Dr. Mustafar diagnosed Tim with a herniated disk in his back.

But in this sentence, Tim is getting lost in the middle. If my main concern is Tim, then this sentence isn’t doing a good job. And unless my wife knows this doctor, there’s no real reason to include their name. Look how much more efficient the passive voice is here:

Tim was diagnosed with a herniated disk in his back.

Now the sentence is shorter and it’s focused on the important parts: my friend and his injury.

When you’re writing in specific (scientific) disciplines

Some disciplines (mainly sciences) require or encourage writing in passive voice to emphasize the objectivity of research. You can’t write in first-person if you’re in passive voice, so you’re less likely to appear biased.

So, rather than writing about a scientific procedure in the active voice like this

We observed a correlation between ice cream sales and violent crime.

Writers use the passive voice, like this:

A correlation was found between ice cream sales and violent crime.

The passive voice here makes the results seem less biased (though it doesn’t actually affect bias).

When you want to avoid unnecessary confrontation or angry responses

Before I get too far into this discussion, I want to make sure I’m clear about one thing: using passive voice, or any other writing technique, to avoid taking responsibility for your mistakes is crummy, unethical behaviour. However, there are times when it might be necessary to de-emphasize your actions and focus readers’ attention more on the action itself. One common example, which comes up often in technical and workplace communication, is delivering bad news.

Say, for example, you’re at work answering an email from someone who has purchased something from your company and wants to return it