As we’ve mentioned, the passive voice can be a shifty operator. It can cover up its source—that is, who’s doing the acting—as this example shows:
- Passive: The personal details will be collected according to the criteria stated in the letter.
- Collected by whom, though?
- Active: The voter fraud commission will collect personal details according to the criteria stated in the letter.
It’s this ability to hide the actor or agent of the sentence that makes the passive voice a powerful tool, but also a tool of the powerful. How do you feel about phrases like, “It has been said. . .,” or “The system is rigged,” or “People have been mistreated,” or “Mistakes were made”? When we obscure the narrative clarity of a sentence, nameless, faceless forces seem to loom; language can victimize or exculpate, and it’s not easy to know who to believe if you can’t follow the narrative. At any rate, you can see how the passive voice can cause wordiness, indirectness, and comprehension problems, and it’s important to know which questions to ask to shed light on the narrative.
| Passive | Question | Active |
|---|---|---|
| Your figures have been reanalyzed in order to determine the coefficient of error. The results will be announced when the situation is judged appropriate. | Who analyzes, and who will announce? | We have reanalyzed your figures in order to determine the range of error. We will announce the results when the time is right. |
| With the price of housing at such inflated levels, those loans cannot be paid off in any shorter period of time. | Who can’t pay the loans off? | With the price of housing at such inflated levels, homeowners cannot pay off those loans in any shorter period of time. |
| After the arm of the hand-held stapler is pushed down, the blade from the magazine is raised by the top-leaf spring, and the magazine and base. | Who pushes it down, and who or what raises it? | After you push down on the arm of the hand-held stapler, the top-leaf spring raises the blade from the magazine, and the magazine and base move apart. |
| However, market share is being lost by 5.25-inch diskettes as is shown in the graph in Figure 2. | Who or what is losing market share, who or what shows it? | However, 5.25-inch diskettes are losing market share as the graph in Figure 2 shows. |
| For many years, federal regulations concerning the use of wire-tapping have been ignored. Only recently have tighter restrictions been imposed on the circumstances that warrant it. | Who has ignored the regulations, and who is now imposing them? | For many years, government officials have ignored federal regulations concerning the use of wire-tapping. Only recently has the federal government imposed tighter restrictions on the circumstances that warrant it. |
Practice
Convert these passive voice sentences into the active voice. Under what circumstances is the active voice a better choice for each of these sentences?
- The process, which was essential for the experiment’s success, was completed by Enzo.
- The PowerPoint that I worked on all day long is being presented by Justin.
- After the pattern has been applied to the fabric, work on the 3D printing can be started.
We’ve discussed in some detail why the passive can be problematic and why active sentences tend to aid clarity. Don’t get the idea, though, that the passive voice is always wrong and should never be used. It is a good writing technique when we don’t want to be bothered with an obvious or too-often-repeated subject and when we need to rearrange words in a sentence for emphasis. The next page will focus more on how and why to use the passive voice, but take another quick look now at that practice set you just completed. Can you imagine a circumstance where it doesn’t matter that it was Enzo specifically who completed the process? Where you were more concerned about your own work on the PowerPoint than on who ended up presenting it? Where applying the pattern and then printing it were done by a machine whose function was so self-evident that it would feel redundant to say that, for example, “The 3D printer will print the pattern in 3D”? It’s time to harness the power of a properly employed passive voice. . .
