Undergraduate Writing Center Handouts

English verbs have two voices—active and passive. Students often use the passive voice because they think it sounds more professional.

The truth is that passive voice, instead of making a paper sound more professional, actually makes the writing unclear, hard to follow, and boring. Good writing keeps passive voice at the bare minimum and uses active voice. Active sentences are usually more economical and fluid than passive ones. Plus, they simply sound better.

Active verbs occur when the subject of the sentence performs the action of the sentence. The person or object performing an action is called the agent. Passive voice occurs when the subject is the recipient of the action.

Passive: The man was bitten by the dog.
Active: The dog bit the man.

Passive: Jackie was given a gift by her mother.
Active: Jackie’s mother gave her a gift.

Passive: The pencil was sharpened by me.
Active: I sharpened the pencil.

Passive voice presents problems when the prepositional phrase at the end of the sentence, often beginning with by, is left off. The sentence loses information. (This is a common strategy in politics.)

The man was bitten.
Jackie was given a gift.
The pencil was sharpened.

In many sentences the agent/recipient relationship isn’t immediately clear. In the following example, “Professor Murray” is the agent and “the lecture” is the recipient.

Active: Professor Murray delivered the lecture.
Passive: The lecture was delivered by Professor Murray.


How do I change passive constructions into active constructions?

1. Identify the passive verb. Go through your whole paper and circle every instance of the verb “to be”: am, is, are, was, were, be, being, been.

   Remember that not every to be verb indicates passive voice. To identify passive voice, look for past participles, which often end in -ed (selected, loaded, side-swiped, bitten, delivered) that are next to a to be verb.

   Fred was [to be verb] selected [past participle] by his peers to serve on the student council.

   Linda was [to be verb] fired [past participle] by Donald Trump.

   Passive voice can occur in many different tenses. So to identify a passive verb form, always look for both the past participle and a form of to be. The sentence below contains two examples of the passive construction in different tenses.

   The van had been loaded with cream pies when it was side-swiped.

   You also regularly find passive voice in present tense:

   The van that is parked on the street is full of cream pies.

2. Locate the agent who actually performs the action.

   Fred was selected by his peers to serve on the student council.

   Linda was fired by Donald Trump.

3. Put the two together in the active construction.

   Fred’s peers selected him to serve on the student council.

   Donald Trump fired Linda.

Exceptions to the Rule

Not every passive verb can or should be made active. Sometimes you simply don’t know who or what performed an action, or you deliberately want to obscure who performed an action. Sometimes you want the focus of a sentence to be the recipient, such as when who did an action is unimportant or less important than to whom it was done.

A passive verb puts the recipient right up front in the sentence where it gets attention:

Examples:

Tracy was featured on the TV nightly news.

Ten people were killed in the plane crash.

George was born on April 27th.

The passive is also customary in many expressions where a writer or speaker may choose to be vague about assigning responsibility:

Examples:

• Mistakes were made.
  
• Flight 107 has been cancelled.
  
• The check was lost in the mail.

When you need passives, use them. But most of the time, you can improve a sentence by changing a passive construction to an active one.

Also, some academic disciplines prefer the use of passive voice. Always check with your professor if you have questions about this.


Handout by Christine Acker, June 2006

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