The passive voice
Image: Sheila Sund via Flickr (cc)
The passive voice gets a bad press. From Don Watson to the Microsoft Word green squiggle under so many of our sentences, it has no shortage of critics. But if it’s so bad, what’s it doing in the English language anyway?
Well, it does have a purpose. In fact, in some situations it’s absurd not to use it.
But first things first – what is ‘voice’ anyway?
Voice refers to the perspective of the subject of a sentence.
Consider the following sentences:
The teacher corrected the exams. (active voice)
The exams were corrected by the teacher. (passive voice)
In Sentence 1, the subject of the sentence (‘the teacher’) is performing the action. In Sentence 2, the subject of the sentence (‘the exams’) is being acted upon.
The first sentence, using the active voice, is a much clearer, more direct way of conveying the information.
So when would you use the passive voice in preference to the active?
Perhaps you might want to place special emphasis on the receiver of the action when the receiver has been the central topic of the discussion thus far and that’s where you want to keep the focus.
In Sentence 2 above, this construction might be useful if the preceding paragraph had been concerned with monitoring the chain of exam procedures, and the significant element lay in what happened to the exams, rather than the actions of the teacher.
The passive can also be useful when you’re trying to persuade people to do something and you don’t want to sound like you’re trying to force them.
Sometimes the subject of a sentence might be obvious, unimportant or unknown, so there is no alternative to using the passive voice: e.g. ‘The Neanderthals were wiped out before the last ice age.’ (We don’t know who wiped out the Neanderthals.)
But the main reason authorities advise against the passive voice is because it’s a good friend to those of us who may find it necessary, from time to time, to shirk responsibility for our actions.
Consider how useful it might be to be able to employ the following constructions:
The keys to the safe have been lost.
Mistakes were made.
The Minister was not informed of the departmental budget blow-out.
Remember, nobody builds a successful career by writing down self-incriminating evidence and publishing it for all to see. There’s such a thing as too much clarity.
