The passive voice

The passive voice is not inherently bad, I agree. There is an appropriate place for it, and in some cases, a sentence written in the passive voice may be more suitable than the same sentence in the active voice. Sometimes there's no way around it without making the paragraph unbearably cumbersome. It's like ending a sentence with a preposition. You aren't supposed to do it, but sometimes it makes the sentence clearer.

Over-use of the passive voice can become a problem, though, especially for new writers. I know that when I started writing, I used the passive voice much more than was necessary, and the quality of the story reflected that. I used it as a crutch to avoid showing the reader my story; instead, I told it to them. Although I've mostly trained myself out of it, I still have to catch myself once and a while.

My feeling on passive voice:

I think most of us who write are a rather bookish lot, doing quite well with both verbal and written communication. We love words and pay very close attention to them in all forms. We also probably do quite well in classroom settings that include extensive lecturing by the teacher.

A college professor will often use passive voice because there can be a strong air of authoritativeness to it. For example:

"Class! Remember this: there is no such thing as darkness, only the absence of light!:

Yes, that was a very profound thing the teacher just said. It works well in a lecture hall. But it sucks on paper.

I think the goody-goody straight-A students from the ranks of us writers might mistakenly gravitate toward the impressive and charismatic speaking styles of our favorite school teachers, and not recognise the need to write far differently than the way we speak.

I've never been able to remember the difference between active and passive voice, so I just write the way I write.

BenPanced said:

I've never been able to remember the difference between active and passive voice, so I just write the way I write.

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That sounds too passive.

I've always thought there's a difference between passive voice and state-of-being verbs, but the phrases always seem to be used interchangeably here.

Passive voice is writing so that the subject is being acted upon:

"The door was opened."

Door is the subject, but it's not doing anything, just being acted upon.

Active voice would be the subject performing the action in the sentence:

"The door swung open." or "Susie opened the door."

State of being verbs are is/was/are/were etc.

"Susie is curious."

From the way I've always understood it, that sentence is not passive voice (the subject is not being acted upon), but it's a pretty boring sentence. So active verbs are usually preferred over state-of-being verbs. Though of course they all have their place.

It's possible that I'm wrong though. Middle school English is pretty far in my past these days.

Keep in mind that, if you want to delay revealing precisely who is performing a certain action, the passive voice is your friend. (This is why so much legal writing is in passive voice; the lawyer is intentionally emphasizing the action rather than the actor.)

ITA that too many beginning writers overuse the passive voice, but at this point, I've seen so many people tie themselves in knots attempting to avoid using it ever that I think that's almost as bad.

Selimthegrim said:

I saw a couple of things on some threads about the use of the passive voice being inherently bad, and I feel the need to reply to those statements. There's nothing wrong with the passive voice. There never has been. There is no correlation between not using the passive and good writing. This link here has some great tidbits, particularly a style manual that uses the passive in the same sentence it tells the readers not to use the passive: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003366.html

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The passive voice isn't inherently bad, and it has its place, but at least 90% of the time, it reads horribly. Simply put, if you have too much passive voice in your fiction, no agent is going to represent it, no publisher is going to buy it, and no one will enjoy reading it, even if they did.

I think part of the problem is that many have no clue what passive and active voice really are. Not all sentences are active or passive. I constantly see writers call something passive when it isn't. Most seem puzzled, and almost none seem to realize that a great many sentences are neither active nor passive.

Plot Device said:

"Class! Remember this: there is no such thing as darkness, only the absence of light!:

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What is it that makes you think this is passive voice?

Selimthegrim said:

I saw a couple of things on some threads about the use of the passive voice being inherently bad, and I feel the need to reply to those statements. There's nothing wrong with the passive voice. There never has been. There is no correlation between not using the passive and good writing. This link here has some great tidbits, particularly a style manual that uses the passive in the same sentence it tells the readers not to use the passive: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003366.html

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The linked essay, by the way, is probably the silliest I've ever read, and about as accurate as a blind sniper. It's so bad, especially on the subject of Strunk & White, that I could almost believe it was written in jest. Whoever wrote it certainly has no clue about style or writing.

I never understood how people use too much passive voice in something...personally, I feel like I have to think about it to use it. It doesn't just pop out into my writing. If a character is doing something...well, they do it. I don't just randomly switch it around so they're not really the subject.

Maybe I was brainwashed by my English teachers to think this way, though...

Or maybe I just don't know what passive voice really is and I use it all the time...

*sigh*

Jamesaritchie said:

What is it that makes you think this is passive voice?

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I was wondering the same thing. It isn't. Which illustrates yet again the mystifying confusion so many people seem to have about this issue.

caw

There seem to be two different concepts:

a) Passive Voice: the grammatical construction
b) Passive Voice: a writers voice that happens to be passive

The prejudice against passive voice is usually based on b). But where things get confusing is that the passive voice (a) is seen as a constituent of a passive voice. And to compound the confusion, many don't seem aware of the style vs. grammar distinction they are using.

One thing I noticed is people using the indefinite article ("a passive voice") when talking about the grammatical concept ("the passive voice"). This is striking, because "a passive voice" is unusual in grammar texts (unless it's used un-hyphenated as an adjective: "a passive voice construction", "a passive voice sentence")

Example: Here

To ensure you’re writing in an active voice, you need to understand the difference between active and passive verbs. With an active verb, the action in the verb is performed by the subject of the sentence. For example: The technical documentation finally met the expectations of managers. With a passive verb, the subject receives the action in the verb. For example: The expectations of the managers were finally met by the technical documentation.

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There's nothing inherently wrong with this contains two concepts:

"Writing in an active/passive voice": Here "voice" seems to be a stylistic entity: something you can write in.

"active/passive verbs": i.e. verbs in the active/passive voice.

So the assumption is that using verbs in the active or passive voice has stylistic consequences. When you are using a passive verb (i.e. a verb in the passive voice) you are writing in a passive voice (i.e. a voice, which happens to be passive). Now "voice" in Grammar and "voice" in stylistics are two different concepts. If you read the entire article, you'll notice that the author never uses the term "active voice"/"passive voice" in relation to verbs. She just calls them "active/passive verbs". Instead, "sentences are written in a passive voice". Note, that the sentences are not written in "the" passive voice.

My interpretation: the passive voice (grammar) applied to a verb makes for a passive voice (stylistics). But the difference isn't made clear. At least this article doesn't use the grammatical term as well (as other articles do).

There are more confused examples out there. No wonder new writers get confused, when there's such a mix-up of grammar and stylistics. Nobody wants to be accused of passive writing. (As an exercise, try to put that in the active voice so that it sounds better.) But, see, "the passive voice" doesn't necessarily make your writing passive.

This sounds like terminological nit-picking, but it isn't actually. Once you have the stylistic term "passive voice" (as in "writing in a passive voice") you can expand the concept to include other things than just the passive voice. There's an example in Plot Device's post. The sentence doesn't contain a verb in the passive voice, not in the grammatical sense. But it does contain a there-is construction; something that could also be counted towards a passive voice (in the specified stylistic sense).

A possible source for this misunderstanding is Strunk & White's The Elements of Style, Rule 14, "Use the active voice". (Rule 11, in Stunks original booklet). Wikipedia has a link to an online version of S&W, which I'm not posting because I'm unsure about copyright status.

Strunk says that "Many a tame sentence of description or exposition can be made lively and emphatic by substituting a transitive in the active voice for some such perfunctory expression as there is or could be heard." (quoted in Selim's link as well.) Of the four examples that follow, only one has a verb in the passive voice. The other three examples are common to-be constructions (there was, it was not long before [he was], the reason that ... was). Does Strunk think these are passive voice? I don't think so.

Now it's time to remember what the rule is called: "Use the active voice". Is this synonymous with "Don't use the passive voice?" No, it isn't, and the three to-be examples show that.

Linking verbs are verbs that link subjects with a complement:

I am tired.

Green apples taste good.

There's a cat on the roof.

These sentences are neither in the active, nor in the passive voice. The rule "Use the active voice" makes sense here, if you understand it to mean: find a transitive verb (a verb that takes an object) to express the meaning you expressed with a linking verb and use it in the active voice. "Don't use the passive voice," makes no sense, here, whatsoever (grammatically speaking). There is no passive voice in these sentences.

However, thinking like this is quite complicated, and you'd have to know what a "transitive in the active voice" is before reading that advice, to make sense of it (how many schools teach transitivity?). I wager most people will think that Strunk thinks that all these sentences contain a passive voice (even linguist Geoffrey K. Pullum - see Selim's link - thought so: 'This ... reveals the interesting fact that they seem to think existential clauses like "There is a spider in the bathtub" are in the passive voice.' I dislike Elements of Style as much as Language Log does, but I do think Strunk's innocent of grammatical ignorance.)

So there are a couple of questions concerning the passive voice in the context of a passive voice:

1. Does the use of the passive voice make a writer's voice "passive"?

2. Should writers avoid to write in a passive voice?

3. Is a passive voice defined onlyby including verbs in the passive voice, or do we include other to-be constructions, and perhaps other language elements that have nothing to do with verbs?

4. a) Is the aversion to the passive voice linked to the fear of victimisation? (Hey, nice things could happen to you! You could be given a present.)

b) Is the aversion to a passive voice linked to the fear of boredom? (Is this circular? It's passive because it bores me, so if you write passive, you'll bore me.)

The passive voice itself is an essential part of the English Language and should be used. (Or would you advise people not to use the letter "x" because you don't like the spelling "thanx"?)

That's me with a long post about terminology, with little in it about writing.

blacbird said:

I was wondering the same thing. It isn't. Which illustrates yet again the mystifying confusion so many people seem to have about this issue.

caw

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there is no such thing as darkness

This is called an expletive construction, which is technically passive.

To JAR and blacbird and anyone else I might have missed: I was taught to avoid "it is/there are" as much as possible.

But if I'm wrong here and am guilty of labelling ALL instances of "is/was" as passive (as RLB and ClaudiaGray among others have pointed out), then by all means, I stand corrected.

I even got a positive rep-point just now from one kind soul who used the rep point to privately tell me I wasn't correct (and I think that was actually a pretty cool way to earn a rep point ).

reenkam said:

Or maybe I just don't know what passive voice really is and I use it all the time...

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Only one in your post:

Maybe I was brainwashed by my English teachers to think this way, though...

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I always thought passive was appropriate for papers and technical writing, but not so great for fiction. I know reading passive voice fiction isn't nearly as engaging as reading active voice.

Plot Device said:

To JAR and blacbird and anyone else I might have missed: I was taught to avoid "it is/there are" as much as possible.

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You're correct (especially the "it was X that did Y" kind of construction), but that isn't a matter of passive voice. It's just a superfluous construction that can almost always be reduced to "X did Y". The passive voice equivalent would be "Y was done by X".

caw

Jamesaritchie said:

Whoever wrote it certainly has no clue about style or writing.

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He is an exceedingly well-respected, knowledgeable, and very much published linguist.

And I pretty much agree with him, though I'm a bit less extreme.

Finally, we have many many threads about passive voice; it's pretty much all been said before.

http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11688&highlight=passive+voice

http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=49750&highlight=passive+voice

http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=47124&highlight=passive+voice

http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=21510&highlight=passive+voice

Medievalist said:

He is an exceedingly well-respected, knowledgeable, and very much published linguist.

And I pretty much agree with him, though I'm a bit less extreme.

Finally, we have many many threads about passive voice; it's pretty much all been said before.

http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11688&highlight=passive+voice

http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=49750&highlight=passive+voice

http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=47124&highlight=passive+voice

http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=21510&highlight=passive+voice

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All sorts of people are well-published and well-respected. This guy is still dead wrong, and it's a silly, silly article.

Jamesaritchie said:

All sorts of people are well-published and well-respected. This guy is still dead wrong, and it's a silly, silly article.

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Well, it's a blog entry on Language Log; they're a bit looser there than they are in articles, and they tend to "preach to the converted" over there.

I'd be interested to hear why you thought it was silly, sillier, silliest.

Write the whole thing in passive voice.

The most important question is: Does it work?

Passive voice allows the writer and the characters to avoid responsibility. "I shot him," is certainly a more profound statement then "He was shot by me." Along those same lines, I noticed that when I was uncomfortable with my subject matter, the voice became passive (notice I did not make the voice passive ). Things just seemed to magically happen with no cause whatsoever. It's a way of backing off from your own writing, and you never want to do that. You can't challenge your readers if you can't even challenge the page.

Granted passive voice can work, and sometimes you want it to seem as if the characters or even narrator are avoiding responsibility. ("He was shot. By me." is an interesting couple of sentences, IMHO, as opposed to "He was shot by me.") But then again, anything can work in moderation. (For instance, telling not showing "I am a sick man. ... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man." etc) But I personally think in general the passive voice detracts from the immediacy of the writing.

And if you need no other reason, every agent, publisher, and editor has been trained to take one look at passive voice and toss it into the circular filing cabinet under "Not right for us."

But even "I shot him," would be considered as telling not showing. You'd be expected to include a several page lead up to the actual shooting, showing you raising the gun to the air, depressing the trigger and releasing it,. then slow motion shots of blood spewing all over the place, groans etc from the mortally wounded one.

The Grift said:

I noticed that when I was uncomfortable with my subject matter, the voice became passive (notice I did not make the voice passive ). Things just seemed to magically happen with no cause whatsoever. It's a way of backing off from your own writing, and you never want to do that. You can't challenge your readers if you can't even challenge the page.

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I, personally, wouldn't write about something I was uncomfortable with. Even if I were able to keep it in active voice, I don't think it'd be very good overall.

The Grift said:

Granted passive voice can work, and sometimes you want it to seem as if the characters or even narrator are avoiding responsibility. ("He was shot. By me." is an interesting couple of sentences, IMHO, as opposed to "He was shot by me.")

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Aren't they the same thing? I mean, one has a period in the middle...but they're both passive, overall. "I shot him" would be a lot more interesting. And it's active voice.

The Grift said:

And if you need no other reason, every agent, publisher, and editor has been trained to take one look at passive voice and toss it into the circular filing cabinet under "Not right for us."

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I know this is true...but I doubt it'd be a deciding factor. If Dostoevsky were querying right now...I'd hope agents would push away his work solely because of that opening.

I think that everything has a place, even passive voice, and avoiding it completely could definitely hinder your writing as much as it could help. This, like many other perceived writing faux-pas, seems to be overanalyzed by authors to the point of insanity.

Can't everyone just be free?!