Center for Writing Excellence Blog

Passive vs. Active Voice

Hi, I’m Ellie Banfield, a class of 2024 Writing Consultant. I’m majoring in English Literature, and I have experience with blogging, creative writing, and professional writing.

Have you ever been told to change your writing from passive to active? I know I have, and I also know this can be a frustrating comment to receive if you aren’t sure what the difference is between passive and active voice. If you can relate to this, then you’ve come to the right place. This post will discuss the differences between active and passive voice, and help you avoid confusion in your own writing.

Let’s start by making sure we’re clear on what passive and active voice is. In a passive sentence, the subject is acted upon by the verb. For example: Your glasses were broken. We don’t know how the glasses were broken or who broke them, but we do know it’s not possible for glasses to break themselves–resulting in a passive sentence. To change this example sentence to an active one, we need to add a subject to act on our verb. So, the sentence could be modified to: I broke your glasses. As the younger sister I am, I like to think about active voice as assigning blame to someone or something.

It’s important to note that passive voice isn’t always bad. In fact, it’s encouraged throughout scientific genres and composition. Here’s an example of passive voice for a scientific report: “Samples were collected from six counties by our research team.” It’s not necessary here to put the subject first because it doesn’t matter who collected the samples; it only matters if they were collected.

Sometimes, passive voice is the better option. Purdue Owl says, “passive voice makes sense when the agent performing the action is obvious, unimportant, or unknown or when a writer wishes to postpone mentioning the agent until the last part of the sentence or to avoid mentioning the agent at all.” Purdue Owl explains two occasions when passive voice can be the better option:

Active:
The dispatcher is notifying police that three prisoners have escaped.
Passive:
Police are being notified that three prisoners have escaped.

In this scenario, the passive sentence is the better option. It’s not necessary to know who’s notifying the police; it only matters they’ve been notified.

One downfall of passive writing is that the sentence can get complicated. As Porter says, with passive writing “ the writer is forced to construct longer sentences than might be required by the active voice. An opportunity is thus created for the introduction of obscure, pompous words and convoluted phraseology.” There’s specific circumstances when you need to use an active voice. To change from passive to active, “consider carefully who or what is performing the action expressed in the verb. Make that agent the subject of the sentence, and change the verb accordingly.”

I hope you have a better understanding of the difference between passive and active voice, and when it’s appropriate to use both. If your professor or a classmate tells you to work on your passive/active voice, come see me or one of my colleagues in the Writing Center.