What is active voice? Here’s an example:
“I ate the apple.”
In active voice, the subject of the verb comes first and performs the action. Compare this to the passive voice:
“The apple was eaten by me.”
The subject of the verb comes later in passive voice or can be dropped and still be grammatically correct, though enigmatic (“the apple was eaten”). It takes more time and words to convey the same meaning.
This is why we prefer the active voice in plain language -- cognitive load is higher in the passive voice. That is, it takes more time and effort to figure out what is being said in the passive voice.
Does that mean we get rid of the passive voice? Banish it altogether? No, we don’t. Even this post uses the passive voice where required.
As Martin Cutts notes in his Oxford Guide to Plain English, the passive voice is useful:
• in defusing hostility
• in doing away with the subject when it is irrelevant
• in some other sentence constructions where the receiver of the action is more important than the doer: “The graffiti artist was arrested by the police today.”
I recently read an article by Erin Brenner favouring the passive voice. Using the passive voice is not technically wrong, but I wouldn’t go so far as to love the passive voice. Here’s why:
>> Passive voice is commonly used when someone somewhere wants to evade responsibility or suppress information about the doer. Not surprisingly, it is widespread in bureaucratic communication. Either the doer is dropped altogether or distanced very well from the action. If I am editing for plain language, I am editing for the cause of clarity, better consumer or civic rights, even better health. I cannot simply shrug my shoulders and walk on if I don’t know who is the doer. I stop to ask why this information is being withheld. Of course, if one is merely editing copy according to the client’s brief which may not include compliance with plain language guidelines, activism is not required.
>> It can also be confusing when the doer of the action is so far removed from the action. If the goal is clarity, more often than not I may have to recast the sentence in active voice.
>> Brenner’s article mentions objectivity as one of the benefits of passive voice and the reason why it's so popular in academic and scientific writing. Here I must disagree. This is a myth that has choked academic and scientific writing and rendered them nearly unreadable and definitely un-enjoyable. As this excellent article by Kerry Evans points out, even scientists should (and very well can) avoid the passive voice and still be objective. She says, “I fail to see how writing the cells were lysed is more objective than writing we lysed the cells.”
She adds that using the active voice doesn’t always mean writing in the first person, which is seen as a limitation by pro-passive writers. See these examples from her:
It has recently been found that antibodies that bind quaternary E protein might contribute to this effect.
Protein was not removed from the centrosome by exposure to nocodozole.
When re-written in the active voice:
Recent studies have found that antibodies that bind quaternary E protein might contribute to this effect.
Exposure to nocodozole did not remove protein from the centrosome.
And, if active voice does necessitate the use of the first person, what of it? Academic and scientific papers are also written by human beings (or at least were till the advent of AI) and using “I” or “we” does not decrease, or for that matter increase, the objectivity of the paper.
So while we need not ban the passive voice, we definitely need to favour the active voice if our goals are reader-friendliness, clarity, and brevity.
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