When the sentence is a general statement or expressionĪn old-fashioned expression, such as “Blessed are those who mourn,” is passive, but should be kept in its current form.Īre you interested in improving your own manuscript? Then we’d recommend running it by a professional copy editor. To avoid this, “a may write, ‘The DNA was sequenced’ instead of ‘We sequenced the DNA.’” Within a scholarly manuscript, it’s usually poor form for authors to reference themselves directly, unless citing their own prior research. Such circumstance makes it difficult to avoid passive voice, like in these two examples from the University of Toronto: “The cave paintings of Lascaux were made in the Upper Old Stone Age,” “An experimental solar power plant will be built in the Australian desert.” Sometimes, when composing a sentence, the subject may be unknown, or just completely irrelevant. Common examples include crime-related incidents, such as “My laptop was stolen,” and medicinal-related results, such as “Aspirin cured my headache.” In some sentences, an object can outweigh the subject in terms of importance, which warrants use of passive voice. Here are a few situations in which passive voice is preferred: Passive voice shouldn’t be sworn off altogether, but rather used sparingly, when appropriate. Should we never use passive voice, then? No, hold on, that’s not the case. And, as it turns out, in many cases, passive sentences can elicit such a response. The last thing a writer wants to do is break the reader’s emersion by forcing them to stop, reread a sentence – maybe even an entire passage, paragraph, or page – and figure out for themselves what events have just transpired. By structuring sentences this way, the author might confuse their readers. “The novel was read by Mom in one day,” however, doesn’t answer our initial question of ‘who?’ until we pass the sentence’s midway point. What is she reading? A novel, in one day’s time. “The novel was read by Mom in one day,” for example, is less direct than saying “Mom read the novel in one day.” This message, in an active voice, remains clear throughout. So, why do writers share such a collective disdain toward passive voice? As the University of Wisconsin’s Writing Center puts it, “Passive voice sentences often use more words, can be vague, and can lead to a tangle of prepositional phrases.” In short, these sentences tend to be really clunky. “The essay was written by the student.” When to Use Passive Voice “The savannah is roamed by beautiful giraffes.” Here’s how our additional examples of active voice–seen above–would be structured in passive voice: “The living room will be cleaned by Billy every Sunday.” “Billy will clean the living room every Sunday." How might this look on paper? Refer to our comparison below. Let’s revisit our friend Billy, who committed to cleaning the living room on Sundays but now, instead of Billy being our sentence’s focus, the living room–in passive voice–takes center stage. In other words, the action and object are placed before the subject when writing in passive voice. Passive sentences, on the other hand, flip this script, featuring a subject as the recipient of an action. “The student wrote the essay.” ( CWI) Passive Voice “Beautiful giraffes roam the savannah.” ( YourDictionary) Writing that “Billy will clean the living room every Sunday,” hence, is an example of active voice. In this hypothetical situation, Billy is the subject, cleaning is the action, and the living room is the object. Let’s say our friend Billy has been neglecting his chores as of late, so he decides that from now on, he’ll clean the living room every Sunday. Whenever a sentence features the subject performing an action, it’s considered an example of active voice. Today, we’ll discuss how to differentiate between active and passive voice, as well as when it’s quite alright to compose passive sentences. While active voice is the preferential choice more often than not, passive voice does serve a purpose in select situations. However, that black-and-white statement is, in fact, an overgeneralization that should be taken with a grain of salt. By and large, early-career authors follow this rule of thumb: Active voice is good.
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