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What is active voice in writing5/1/2024 ![]() If these sentences used an active voice, they could read: Despite these sentences being completely grammatically sound, we don’t know who hit “me” or what struck the car. The passive voice “hides” who does the action. You may have noticed something unique about the previous two sentences: the subject of the sentence is not the person (or thing) performing the action. In the simplest terms, an active voice sentence is written in the form of “A does B.”Ī passive voice sentence is written in the form of “B is done by A.”īoth constructions are grammatically correct, but active voice is a more powerful sentence construction for most academic writing. Let’s look at a couple more examples of the passive voice: When possible, use the active voice to convey who or what performs the action of the verb. In other words, something is being done to something by somebody: The ball was thrown by the outfielder. While the passive voice has a place, particularly in some subjects like the sciences and social sciences, its overuse can result in writing that is wordy, vague, and stuffy. If you wrote the same sentence in the passive voice, it would emphasize the recipient of the action. ![]() The subject, “outfielder” actively performs the action of the verb “throw.” For example, here is a sentence that uses the active verbs: The outfielder throws the ball. What does that mean? The active voice emphasizes the person or thing doing the action in a sentence. She became a licensed California attorney in 2010 and specializes in legal research and writing.You may have heard that it is best to use active verbs when you write. Savannah Blackwell is a former news reporter who covered government and politics for more than a decade, mostly in San Francisco. Thus, the presumption is against the passive voice. According to Garner, they account for no more than 15 to 20 percent of contexts in which the passive appears. Situations calling for passive construction are the exception, however. Smith’s) teeth were knocked out (Wydick).Īnd you may opt for the passive “when a sense of detached abstraction is appropriate,” as in the example “In the eyes of the law, all persons are created equal” (Wydick). Or when you would rather not highlight what your client did, as in (Mr. You may use the passive when the actor is unknown: The data files were mysteriously destroyed (Wydick again). For example, passive voice is appropriate for emphasizing what was done, as opposed to who did it: The subpoena was served on January 19th (from Wydick). Occasionally, a writer has a good reason to use the passive voice. Not surprisingly, bureaucrats and politicians like to use this type of construction, because it hides the identity of who is responsibility for the action.Īs Garner notes in The Winning Brief (3d Ed.), identifying the actor in passive voice usually requires adding a “by-phrase,” as in “The brief was filed,” versus, “The brief was filed by (Party X).”Ī third problem with passive voice is that it ruins the normal subject-verb order of a sentence, thus making it more difficult for readers to follow along.Īvoid passive voice by eschewing use of a be-verb followed by a past particle (often a verb ending in ed), such as is dismissed, are docketed, and was vacated. In his Plain English for Lawyers (5th Ed.), Richard Wydick calls this sort of construction the “truncated passive.” Here’s his example: The ball was kicked. With passive voice, the writer can obscure the identity of the actor. With active voice, the reader can tell who is doing what. Moreover, use of passive verbs often creates ambiguity. Passive voice is wordier than active voice. In the examples above, the sentence in the passive voice includes two additional words, was and by. Using active verbs makes your writing livelier, as well as more concise, and more readable. ![]() Passive: The moon was jumped over by the cow. ![]() Instead, the subject is acted upon, or as legal writing expert Bryan Garner says, in passive voice, the writer “back into the sentence.” In passive voice, the subject does not perform the action of the verb. In active voice, the subject of the clause or sentence does the acting. What is the difference between the passive and active voice in writing?
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