The Writing-Practice Journal

Passive Voice: Can we use it?

         In the active voice, the subject performs the action. “John kicked the ball.” In the passive voice the subject receives the action “The ball was kicked by John.” or the subject remains unknown. “The ball was kicked.”

         Human mind is geared to grasp active voice more readily. That is why using active voice adds to the clarity of our writing.

         When people try to blur the issues or they don’t want to name the subject of the action, they use passive voice. Politicians and some people in the academia are famous for using passive voice. A good writer, however, opts for clarity and uses the active voice whenever he can. Yet, there are instances when passive voice can be used effectively.

         Sometimes passive voice is a good choice, especially when a mystery writer doesn’t want the reader to know who did the action, as least not in the beginning of his story.
         “There was blood all over the embankment. It was obvious the body was thrown into the ditch by force.”

         Sometimes, putting the doer of the action at the end of a sentence or paragraph bridges that section to the next.
          The Red Pony was written by John Steinbeck. Steinbeck was a novelist, famous for his strikingly beautiful descriptions.

         Sometimes, who did the certain action is not important to the plot and it pulls the attention to another direction.
“When the ratio of side effects of these two drugs were taken, the difference was insignificant.”

The bottom line is, if we reduce our usage of passive voice only to those instances where its use is inevitable, our writing will become clearer and more professional. So let’s write with an eye on how we use the passive voice.

Today’s tip:
“When we use a short quotation to fortify an argument, putting the quotation in quotation marks is sufficient. Setting it in a separate paragraph could hinder the flow of our writing.”

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