So I went down a rabbit hole of learning why we talk in passive voice, how to get comfortable with active voice, and practice exercises. I knew something needed to change - and quickly - if I wanted to build a career as a writer. The email read “Bani, we’ve gone through the piece - and while we loved the perspective you bring - our editors don’t have the capacity to correct so many instances of passive voice.” Until I got fired from a project over it. It was my safe space.Īfter all, I'd grown up being told that the passive voice was "objective," "unbiased," and "professional." And I was writing for an educated, intelligent, executive audience - “unprofessional” was the last thing I wanted to be. When I started writing for a digital audience, the passive voice was all I knew. Redrafting those sentences into their active counterparts will almost certainly be one of the swiftest paths to improving the quality of your writing.Turn passive voice to active How I switched from passive to active With that in mind, I encourage you to hunt down the unintentional use of passive voice in your writing. When it comes to the use of active and passive voice there is, as usual, some flexibility regarding the rules. Removing “was” and transforming the verb “eating” into “ate” strengthens the sentence, clarifies the meaning, and supports comprehension in the same way as transforming a sentence from passive to active voice. All the same, I recommend revising the sentence to read, “ Kevin ate the bananas.” I do so largely because these “was” sentences produce similar negative effects as their passive voice counterparts.įor example, the sentence, “ Kevin was eating the bananas,” is already in the active voice. In fact, in my mind, I often drop the use of “was” sentences into the same mental bucket as other passive voice sentences. While this is not technically the case, I understand the confusion. Some people mistakenly suggest all sentences using versions of the verb “to be” – including the past tense versions “I was” (singular) and “we were” (plural) – are in passive voice. Now here’s where things can get a little controversial … In this example, the sentence’s missing subject produces an intentional air of mystery. Passive voice is also helpful when you want to leave the subject of the sentence intentionally vague or unknown: Bond, is who the readers care about, not the random henchman, and the sentence is structured accordingly. James Bond (object) was shot (verb) by a random henchman (subject). You may want to use passive voice when the object of the sentence is more important than the subject: There are situations where an author may consciously choose to write in passive voice. That said, using passive voice isn’t always a mistake. Likewise, George Orwell, in his essay, Politics and the English Language, proposes the rule: “Never use the passive where you can use the active.” Strunk and White warn against the use of passive voice in their seminal style guide, The Elements of Style. The active version of a sentence almost always does a better job of quickly creating a visual image in the mind of the reader. The passive version is unnecessarily complex, adds unnecessary words, and reduces comprehension and clarity. Re-writing the song title into the passive voice, Fogarty transforms it into the inelegant and confusing, “It was heard by me through the grapevine,” deftly clarifying the problem with passive voice. active voice, English grammar expert Mignon Fogarty uses the excellent example of Marvin Gay song, “I heard it through the grapevine.” Written in the passive voice, the sentence becomes about the bananas as opposed to being about our character, Kevin. Note how switching the order of the subject and object weakens the sentence’s impact. The bananas (object) were eaten (verb) by Kevin (subject). Here is the same sentence as it would appear in many a manuscript: While this approach to sentence construction appears simple and obvious, aspiring authors have a tendency to fall into the habit of using passive voice in their fiction writing. In this example, our protagonist Kevin (the sentence’s subject) is doing the action of eating (verb) some bananas (object). For example, here’s a sentence written in active voice: Sentences written in active voice organize words so that the subject of the sentence is doing the action, not the object. Using “active voice” is one of the easiest ways to improve the quality of your writing.
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