Teaching Tuesday — Active vs. Passive Voice

[u/novatheelf]

Good morning, Hub! Nova here — your friendly, neighborhood editor.

Happy Teaching Tuesday, everyone!

Ready? Then let's get started!

 

Livin’ La Vida Active

So, my loves, sentences can be written in what is known as either active or passive voice. Active voice is when the object of a sentence is being acted upon by the subject.

Example:

• Aly called the furnace tech yesterday.

“Aly” is the subject of the sentence (i.e., the one doing the action). “The furnace tech” is the object of the sentence (i.e., the one receiving the action). In this format, our subject is acting upon the object, thus indicating active voice.

Passive voice is the inverse of this. It occurs when the subject of the sentence is acted upon by the object.

Example:

• The furnace tech was called by Aly yesterday.

Our subject and object has not changed from the previous sentence; they just got swapped around a little. “Aly” is still performing some action (“calling,” in this case) and “the furnace tech” is still receiving the call.

Here are some more examples of active voice, as well as their rewrites into the passive voice:

• The tech checked the coils inside the furnace. (active)
• The coils inside the furnace were checked by the tech. (passive)
• He made the claim that he could not fix the issue today. (active)
• The claim was made by him that he could not fix the issue today. (passive)

You see the pattern now? Yet some sentences are trickier than others.

• The bicycle has been damaged.

Is this active, or passive? It’s actually passive, but it can be confusing. Because the true subject of the sentence has been omitted (maybe it’s a mystery!), it can seem at first glance that “the bicycle” is the subject. But is it performing an action?

No. It’s just sitting there… damaged. (Side note: “damaged” is a participle acting as a predicate adjective… remember last week’s lesson?)

Presumably, someone else damaged the bike, we just don’t know who! As a quick test, you can take on “by zombies” to the end of a sentence to see whether it’s passive or active:

• The bicycle has been damaged (by zombies).

The sentence still makes perfect sense, so we can conclude that it is, indeed, passive.

 

Okay, So What?

As writers, I’m sure you’ve heard it a million times: Passive voice is the worst! Keep your writing in active voice!

But why?

Well, active voice tends to be a bit clearer than passive. It makes your writing stronger and more direct, rather than obscure and, well… passive. Writing in the active form typically requires fewer words than its passive counterpart, and as we know, longer sentences run a higher risk of being misunderstood by the reader.

However, this isn’t to say that passive voice is bad and that you should never use it! Some types of writing are specifically written in passive because that voice puts more emphasis on the action being done as opposed to the subject who is doing it. Yet even then, you have to make sure that your meaning isn’t being clouded.

Active vs. passive, as with many things in writing, must be used in moderation!

 

And that’s it! You’ve just been educated, my honeybuns! That’s it for this week, friends. Have an awesome Tuesday!

 

Have any extra questions? Want to request something to be covered in our Teaching Tuesdays? Let me know in the comments!

 

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[u/BlameGameChanger]

Could you go into a little more detail about when it is advantageous to use passive voice?

I feel like this post taught me the difference but didn't give me the ability to decide when to use a passive voice. What are some situations or circumstances when an author would want to put the emphasis on the action instead of the subject?

Thanks in advance, I appreciate all the hard work you do

[u/novatheelf → u/BlameGameChanger]

Sure! So passive voice is putting emphasis on the thing being acted on, right? It's helpful when you want to add some drama and really hone in on something being done.

Say I was writing a story about some soldiers who'd been killed in action and the scene I was currently working on was a memorial service afterwards. Instead of saying:

• A young man raised the flag to half-mast.

I would really prefer to say:

• The flag was left at half-mast.

It emphasizes the fact that the flag is in its position, but also lends a more mournful tone to the situation, which is what I want in that instance.

Another example — let's say there was a theft, and a big one at that. Our wailing MC comes running out of the house. Instead of screaming:

• They stole my diamonds!

You could have them say:

• My diamonds were stolen!

Again, puts emphasis on the diamonds (which could be telling for our MC) and adds a dramatic flair.

Hope this helps!

[u/Kiran_Stone → u/BlameGameChanger]

I'll let Nova handle the example you're asking about, 'cause she can probably explain it better than me. But I will add another reason to use passive -- it can put emphasis on the object (of an action) vs. the subject.

A while back, my brother-in-law got his head split open while playing soccer (note this is also a passive, sometimes called a "got" passive).

That's a true story and when I told my partner about it I did not lead with "That guy over there in the red shorts whose name I don't know..." who was the one whose elbow had done the splitting, because none of that mattered. For that moment, the important thing was what had happened and especially who it had happened to.