Active Voice vs. Passive Voice
How to tell the difference
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There seems to be a lot of confusion among newer writers about what qualifies as active voice. There are those who seem to think the word “was” is on the forbidden usage list, and they’ll search their manuscript with the intent of slashing any sentence that includes the word.
Zombie rules
Strunk and White, in the famous The Elements of Style, listed “Use the active voice” among their elementary principles of composition. Their reasoning for this is sound: the active voice is more direct. It can often portray a more powerful feel.
And even though they follow this advice with the addition of “This rule does not, of course, mean that the writer should entirely discard the passive voice, which is frequently convenient and sometimes necessary [emphasis mine], that little addendum is more often ignored in favor of the misquoted and misapplied “Never use the passive voice when writing.”
Enter the zombie rule. A zombie rule is more like a stylistic guideline that somehow, somewhere, somebody decided was an unbreakable rule, and everyone else blindly followed it and held it as a sacred oath to be kept under threat of pain or death. A fine, fine example of a zombie rule is the ol’ “never end a sentence with a preposition.” Don’t even get me started on that misconception—that’s a topic for another post.
The differences between active and passive sentences
As you may have guessed by now, there’s nothing wrong with writing passive sentences, and as with most things, there’s a time and place for them. But how can a new writer know what truly qualifies as passive? Here are some basic definitions of each.
ACTIVE VOICE: the subject is performing the action in an active sentence. Because the subject is doing the action, that’s where the focus is.
Example: Giuseppe opened the door to the study.
The focus here is on Giuseppe and what he did. There’s no mystery or ambiguity about who did what. Active voice implies strength and control of a situation.
PASSIVE VOICE: the subject is the recipient of the action. The focus is still on the subject, but the subject doesn’t actually do anything. The action is performed by someone or something else.
Example: The door to the study was opened slowly.
The focus here is on the door itself. Do we know who opened it? Not yet. And the door didn’t open on its own; someone or something opened it. Passive voice implies a compliance with or acceptance of what’s happening or being done by another. Even if I added “by Giuseppe,” it would still be passive because the subject (the door) isn’t the one performing the action.
How to choose active or passive when writing
Let’s take the above examples and examine why one structure might work better than another. If we want to keep the action moving, we’d most likely use active voice. Maybe Giuseppe burst into the study, excited about some good news he wanted to share. Active is the way to go.
Point of view
But what if the point of view is from the person sitting in the study, and they’re watching the door slowly open (or burst open)? We don’t know who opened the door—an intruder? a ghost? the wind?—and the point of view doesn’t allow us that knowledge. Then passive is the clear choice. Writing “The door was pushed open by an unseen force” is more mysterious and startling, and focuses on the moment the door opens, creating tension, rather than whatever opened the door in the first place. The unknown works to the advantage there.
Nonfiction
Some nonfiction is best suited to passive voice. Crime reports typically default to this unless the officer filing the report knows exactly who the perpetrator is. Scientific research often uses the passive voice to show a type of neutrality, an objective nature, though not always. Speechwriters use the passive construction to allow politicians to avoid blame (the classic “mistakes were made” sidestepping).
An obvious actor
Passive sentences work well for impact when the doer of the action is obvious. For example, the family cat somehow ends up chasing a squirrel through the house, a crash is heard in the kitchen, and the main character enters the room: “He heard the skittering of claws on linoleum, a brief squeak, and then a crash. He dared to peek around the corner. The wedding cake had been destroyed.”
We all know that the animals are the culprits here, and the cake is the real focus, so it would actually lessen the impact if the sentence were active, e.g. “The cat and squirrel had destroyed the cake.” With the passive voice, the reader sees “The wedding cake” and the tension is heightened as they wonder, “WHAT? WHAT HAPPENED TO THE CAKE?” before finishing the sentence.
Why do so many people get it wrong?
Unfortunately, the previously mentioned Strunk and White book has been hailed as a bible of sorts over the years, though it actually promotes a good deal of bad or meaningless advice. In fact, on this particular topic of active vs. passive voice, it contains examples of passive sentences that aren’t actually passive. Some of their “passive to active” examples are merely showing how to be more concise with a sentence that is, at its core, already active.
If college students are taught that The Elements of Style is full of great advice (spoiler alert: it’s not), then it’s not surprising that there’s so much confusion about what’s what. Happily, there are a few quick tricks to set you straight.
But aren’t “was” and “were” passive?
I think this is what trips people up the most. Grammar Girl Mignon Fogarty explains this in such a simple way that I can’t possibly write it better, so I’m going to link to “Avoid This Common Passive Voice Mistake!” and you can read it for yourself.
The gist is reminiscent of geometry: all squares and rectangles are quadrilaterals but not all quadrilaterals are squares. All squares are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares.
In the same way, almost all passive sentences will contain some form of “to be” verbs, but all sentences containing those verbs are not necessarily passive. Again, Fogarty’s article linked above provides a link within it that fleshes that out well, so make sure you check it out.
The easiest way to know which is which
This is silly, but you’ll probably never forget it. If the subject of the sentence can be acted upon by zombies, it’s passive. Yes, it’s exactly that simple.
Active: Ethel vacuumed the floor. [Ethel is performing the action.]
Passive: The floor was vacuumed. [How can I tell? The floor was vacuumed by zombies. The subject “floor” is the recipient of a zombie vacuuming.]
Active: They trimmed the grapevines. [“They” did the trimming.]
Passive: The grapevines were trimmed to perfection. [The grapevines were trimmed to perfection by zombies.]
Maybe I should hire some zombies to get my house and yard spruced up, eh?
The bottom line
Choose your information sources carefully and don’t assume something is a rule unless you can verify it with an actual editor (multiple editors, really) or an up-to-date grammar source.
Words exist for a reason, and all words have a place somewhere in someone’s writing. There are no words that are “bad” to use or forbidden in “good” writing. There is, however, common sense and the ability to research whether something is a rule, a particular style, or a convention based upon hearsay.
