Passive Voice Shall Not Be Used!
Countless times I’ve bid on a job and been told, with no apparent sense of irony, “Passive voice is not to be used!”
Usually, this happens in one of my first conversations with the potential client. They are adamant, and I – not wanting to lose the job by quibbling over sentence structures – usually just agree. My client is an adult who knows what they want. And what they want probably doesn’t include being argued with by someone who is, essentially, a short-term employee.
Whatever else my client is, however, they are not an expert at the English language. And in those times when I’ve had the opportunity to discuss passive voice, this is what I’ve said.
Passive voice gets explained
Passive voice is the transposition of the subject and object of a sentence, with the use of the auxiliary verb “be” (and sometimes “get”) and the past participle of the original verb.[i]
That sounds complicated because it can get complicated. But seeing it helps:
1. Active voice: Fans love Bill Murray for his appearances in wedding photos.
2. Passive voice: Bill Murray is loved for his appearances in wedding photos.
In active voice, the agent (fans) does the action (love) on the object (Bill Murray).
In passive voice, the former object (Bill Murray) is now the subject of the sentence, and receives the action of the verb (love) – possibly by an unnamed source (you’ll notice that his fans go unmentioned in our example).
For skilled writers, this simple twist does many things.
The topic can be better focused
Passive voice gives the writer control of the focus of their sentence.
If I was commissioned to write an article about how much Bill Murray’s fans love his appearances in random wedding photos, then opening with the active voice example – “Fans love Bill Murray…” – makes sense.
But if I’m writing an article about Bill Murray, and want to open it with a humanizing story about his appearances in wedding photos, then the passive voice makes the most sense – because “Bill Murray is loved for his appearances” in them.
Not every sentence in an article or story has to use the overall theme as its subject in this way. But certainly there are times when it makes the most sense.
Another example of passive allowing the writer to focus on the right thing:
1. A stranger shot my husband!
2. My husband was shot!
There are many reasons that version 2 here is better than version 1. First, it’s shorter by a word – and there are plenty of times in contemporary writing when every word counts.
Second, it allows the writer to focus on what’s important. Neither the person calling 911 nor the dispatcher care about the stranger who did the shooting. They care about the husband, and that he was shot. The stranger is an unimportant detail here (though he won’t be after the police get involved!).
Unnecessary agents can be hidden
Another job of the passive construction “Bill Murray is loved…” is to allow the action of love to happen without a named agent.
The active version demands an agent – in this case, I used “fans.” “Fans love Bill Murray….” But naming “fans” as the agent excludes those people who might think Murray is only a passably good actor but who love his appearances in wedding photos.
Using something like “people” as the agent would be, on the other hand, too inclusive – because there are probably people out there who think that random celebrities should stay out of such a private event, but who love Bill Murray’s work.
There might be the perfect word to encapsulate the people who love Murray for these wedding-photo appearances, without including anyone who doesn’t.
But it doesn’t matter. Because the English language allows me to very easily take care of this by omitting the agent: “Bill Murray is loved for these wedding photos.”
Sometimes this omission is made to be deceptive or disingenuous. “Mistakes were made,” said President George H.W. Bush. And President Grant. And Reagan. And Nixon. And a slew of their Secretaries. This use of passive voice is done to hide the agent that made the mistakes. “I’m sorry that your vase was broken,” a clever but not very apologetic child might say.
Sometimes this effect is accidental. In which case, passive voice may still be the better choice – but it may not be. A careful editor or publisher should decide.
Words must be cut, and repetitions reworded!
In the 1860’s Tolstoy could be loved for writing 500,000-word novels. But if he tried that today, his Goodreads reviews would be all, “TL;DR.”
Contemporary writing is dense. Writers constantly need to look for ways to reduce word count without creating repetitions.
In writing about something like Bill Murray showing up in random wedding photos, a dense article runs the risk of repeating “Bill Murray” and “wedding photos.”
This can be prevented with pronouns: “Bill Murray shows up in a lot of wedding photos. Pictures of him are all over the internet.”
It can also be prevented with passive voice. “Bill Murray shows up in a lot of wedding photos. The internet is plastered with the pictures.”
Either of these is okay, and what should guide the choice between them is context. If my next lines were about internet forums that collect these pictures of Bill Murray at weddings, then it would be thematic to use the passive voice that placed “the internet” as the subject of the sentence. If my discussion moves to talk about different aspects of these pictures – his dress, his singularly unkempt appearance, or the starstruck look in the eyes of the newlyweds, for example – then it would make sense to use the active version that had “Pictures” as the subject.
Weakness will not be tolerated!
Even from self-described grammarphiles, complaints are made about passive voice. Most of them, however, are misguided.
It isn’t grammatical
Passive voice is grammatical. That’s just a fact nay-sayers of this sort need to come to terms with.
It obscures the agent of the action
By definition, the agent of an action is obscured by passive voice. And there are times when this is bad.
However, sometimes what the writer wants the reader to focus on are the effects of the verb, or the thing that received its action. In these cases, passive voice should be viewed as providing clarity.
It’s wordy
On the one hand, passive voice adds two words to a sentence – a form of “be” and the preposition “by.”
1. Fans love Bill Murray
2. Bill Murray is loved by his fans.
On the other, the agent can completely be deleted.
1. Fans love Bill Murray.
2. Bill Murray is loved.
Note that, in our second example, the sentences are exactly the same length.
There are times when the subject of a sentence is longer than just one or two words.
1. Jesse James and the James-Younger Gang robbed trains.
2. The trains were robbed.
In cases like this – assuming the context allows the agent to be known, or knowing the agent is otherwise unnecessary – active voice is the wordier choice.
It’s weak
Conversations I’ve had regarding passive voice (yes, I’m the sort of person who has deep conversations about passive voice) date its prohibition to the turn of the 20th century.
In 1916, “On the Art of Writing” was published by Arthur Quiller-Couch[ii]. In it, Quiller-Couch gives this rather problematic advice (emphasis mine): “Generally, use… active voice… eschewing the stationary passive… for… by his use of the straight verb… you can tell a man’s style, if it be masculine or neuter….”
To be fair to Quiller-Couch, straight as in “not-gay” wasn’t used until the 1940’s[iii] – so that isn’t his meaning. Still, to my knowledge, there is no evidence that testosterone, testicles, or receding hairlines effect the prevalence of passive voice in a man’s (or woman’s) writing.
The vastly influential “The Elements of Style”, first published by William Strunk in 1918 and most recently republished in 2018, gave similarly bad advice, claiming that “The habitual use of the active voice makes for forcible writing.”[iv]
It can do that. But a poorly written text won’t be as much improved by changing passive to active voice as a decent text can be made great by the thoughtful inclusion of passive voice.
Tis better to love than to get loved
Usually, passive voice is made with a form of “be.” But it can also be made with get.
“I’m sorry the window got broken” is something I may have said more than once growing up.
References
[i] Burridge, K., & Börjars, K. (2010). Introducing English grammar. P 89.
[ii] Quiller-Couch, A. T. (1916). On the art of writing: Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge, 1913-1914. University Press.
[iii] Straight (adj 2). (n.d.) In Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved on May 2, 2020, from https://www.etymonline.com/word/straight
[iv] Strunk, W., White, E. B., & Kalman, M. (1918). The Elements of Style:(illustrated. SWB Books. Retrieved on May 2, 2020, from http://www.gutenberg.org/files/37134/37134-h/37134-h.htm
