PRDV008: Preparing and Delivering Presentations

A way to focus your sentences on action and actors is to use the active voice rather than the passive voice.

Learning Objectives

Give examples of situations where it is appropriate to use passive voice in business writing

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• To write the active voice, place the actor, which is the person or the thing performing the action, in the subject position. Your verb will then describe the actor's action.
• Research shows that readers comprehend active sentences more rapidly than passive ones. The active voice also eliminates the vagueness and ambiguity that often characterizes the passive voice.
• Although the passive voice generally reduces readability, it has some good uses, such as when you don't want to identify the actor.

Key Terms

• active: Having the power or quality of acting; causing change; communicating action or motion; acting.
• passive: Being subjected to an action without producing a reaction.

The Passive Voice Defined

In writing, the passive voice is when the grammatical subject of the verb is the recipient (not the source) of the action denoted by the verb. For example, "the changes were recommended by the consultant" is an example of the passive voice.

Reasons to Avoid the Passive Voice

Research shows that readers comprehend active sentences more rapidly than passive ones. The active voice also eliminates the vagueness and ambiguity that often characterize the passive voice. In the passive voice, a sentence can describe an action without telling who did it. For example, "The ball was hit" is a grammatically correct sentence, but doesn't tell who or what hit the ball. With the active voice, the writer identifies the actor: "Linda hit the ball. " Keep in mind, the passive voice is not a grammatical error, it is a stylistic choice.

The active voice keeps the focus of the sentence on the action. To write the active voice, place the actor, which is the person or the thing performing the action, in the subject position. The verb will then describe the actor's action.

In business writing, the use of the active voice is important to get people to answer a call to action. A memo written in the active voice will have a greater impact than one written in the passive voice. Using the active instead of passive voice in writing technical documents and instructions helps readers understand everything immediately without having to read anything twice.

Appropriate Uses of the Passive Voice

Although the passive voice generally reduces readability, it has some good uses, such as when you don't want to identify the actor. If the writer decides it would be ethically acceptable to communicate news to the reader without naming the person who made the report, the passive voice is okay. Be careful to avoid using the passive voice to hide an actor's identity when it is unethical to do so, such as when trying to avoid accepting responsibility for your employer's actions.

Passive Voice: Using the passive voice in your writing can obscure the meaning of your message.