Active and Passive Voice

When you’re writing, it’s important to know the difference between active and passive voice. Active voice is more direct and makes your writing sound more powerful. Passive voice is complicated and indirect. In this article, we’ll discuss the differences between active and passive voice, and how to use them correctly in your writing.

What is Active Voice?

Active voice is when the subject of a sentence acts. For example, “I am writing a blog post.” In this sentence, “I” is the subject, and “am writing” is the verb. When you use an active voice, your sentences are usually shorter and easier to understand.

What is Passive Voice?

Passive voice is when the subject of a sentence is acted upon. For example, “The blog post is being written by me.” In this sentence, “blog post” is the subject, and “is being written” is the verb. When you use passive voice, your sentences tend to be longer and more complicated.

Why use Active Voice?

Active voice is usually more concise and straightforward than passive voice. It can also make your writing more powerful because it emphasizes the subject.

Why use Passive Voice?

Passive voice can be useful when you want to emphasize the recipient of the action in a sentence instead of the doer of the action. It can also help hide the identity of the subject, or when you don’t know who the subject is.

When to use Active Voice?

In general, you should use active voice whenever possible. However, there are a few situations where passive voice is preferable:

• When you want to emphasize the object of a sentence instead of the subject
• When you want to hide the identity of the subject
• When you don’t know who the subject is

When to use Passive Voice

There are a few situations where passive voice is preferable:

• When you want to emphasize the object of a sentence instead of the subject
• When you want to hide the identity of the subject
• When you don’t know who the subject is
• When the subject is unimportant or unknown

Rules of Active Voice

When you’re using an active voice, the subject of your sentence is acting. This makes for simpler, shorter sentences because you don’t need to include an object.

Here’s an example of a sentence in active voice:

The cashier counted the money.

In this sentence, “The cashier” is the subject, and “counted the money” is the verb.

Rules of Passive Voice

A sentence written in passive voice has the object acting, rather than the subject. This often makes for more complicated sentences, as you need to include a preposition (by) and the agent of the action (the person or thing that did the action).

Here’s an example of a sentence in passive voice:

The money was counted by the cashier.

In this sentence, “The money” is the object, “was counted” is the verb, and “the cashier” is the agent.

Although active voice sentences are usually shorter and simpler, there are times when passive voice can be helpful.

If you don’t know who did the action, you can use passive voice:

The window was broken.

If you want to emphasize the object rather than the subject, you can use passive voice:

Two dozen cookies were eaten by the boys.

If you want to avoid naming the actor altogether, you can use passive voice:

The reports will be ready by noon.

When deciding whether to use active or passive voice in a sentence, ask yourself if the subject is doing the action (active voice) or having the action done to it (passive voice).

Conclusion

As discussed, there are two voices in English that one can use to write a sentence to show the relationship between the subject and the verb. When the subject is acted upon, we use passive voice and when the subject itself acts we use active voice. One should keep in mind the elementary rules to be able to convert a sentence where the verb is active voice to passive voice and vice versa.