Why you should write in the active voice

Posted on March 1, 2010 by Gary Chow | 3 Comments » | Trackback URL

As a copywriter and editor one of the things that drive me nuts when I review a document is the passive style of writing. This is commonplace in many corporate and bureaucratic publications, as well as in engineering and scientific reports. It’s rampant in legal documents.

In some cases the passive voice may be required, but in most case you’d be better off using the active voice; after all, that is the way we normally speak to one another.

Writing in the active voice is a key principle of plain English and helps to make a document livelier, more personal, succinct and easier to follow.

The passive voice has the opposite effect and when used throughout a document can make it dull and dreary.

So what’s the difference between active and passive voice?

The active voice generally has the following distinguishing features:

• It has an ‘agent’ who is performing the action
• The agent (doer) usually comes before the verb
• It has an active verb
• the order of the words in the sentence is typically: agent – verb – object.

For example:

“The secretary will send you the invoice next week”.

“She gave me the parcel”

“The company closed its state office last week”

In these sentences it is clear who is doing what and to whom and when.

On the other hand, if those sentences were rewritten in the passive voice, you’d get the following:

“The invoice will be sent by the secretary next week”

“The parcel was given to me”

“The state office was closed by the company last week”

The order of the sentence is reversed. The doer of the action now follows the verb. In many cases of passive writing, the doer is omitted so you are left wondering who actually did the action (as in the second example above).

Notice in the above passive sentences, the words “will be” and “was”? Both are parts of the verb “to be”. When you see this form, you can be quite certain that the sentence is a passive one. The other sure-fire sign is the presence of a past participle, which in the above cases are the words “sent”, “given” and “closed”. (Past participles of regular verbs usually end with “-ed” as in “closed”, “decided”, “extended”.)

Although the above simple examples may not appear to make a great difference in ease of understanding, when an entire document is written in lengthy, long-winded passive sentences it has the effect of sucking the life out of a document and making it a chore to read. Try for example reading an insurance policy or an old-style will.

How to make sentences active

To change a passive sentence to active is easy. You simply put the agent into the sentence and place it before the verb.

Example of passive:

“The matter will be considered shortly.” (Note the “will be” and past participle “considered”?)

Example when changed to active:

“We will consider the matter shortly.”

Not only are active sentences more explicit and personal, they tend to be shorter. A succinct sentence is almost always better than a long one.