The art of avoiding needless voice shifts

[Joe Carillo]

Can you imagine if, in the middle of the night, your soft-spoken wife, husband, or sibling suddenly speaks in a hard-edged voice that definitely could not be hers or his? You will no doubt be puzzled, shocked, probably thrown into a state of panic. The totally unexpected is, of course, rarely welcome. It is something that seriously violates the familiarity, sense of security, and normal rhythm of everybody’s personal universe.

                     IMAGE CREDIT: ADAPTED FROM NATUREOFWRITING.COM


Readers encounter this kind of bewilderment when we make unannounced shifts in voice, tense, person, and number in our writing. These shifts make prose exasperating and difficult to understand; they are, in fact, the most formidable enemies of good writing. We thus should cultivate the art of avoiding them—and of spotting and eliminating them everytime they creep into our prose.

The first thing to guard against is making unnecessary shifts from the active to the passive voice. Although the passive voice is sometimes desirable to use for effect, doing this involves a change of point of view that could be terribly confusing. Consider the jarring voice shift in this sentence: “We doubted the authenticity of the woman’s documents, and the truthfulness of her testimony was also doubtful.” Here’s the sentence in consistent active voice: “We doubted the authenticity of the woman’s documents and the truthfulness of her testimony.” Another case of unnecessary voice shifting: “We assigned all of our regular writing staff to the project, and even part-time writers were hired.” Revised to all active: “We assigned all of our regular writing staff to the project and even hired part-time writers.”

The second thing to be wary of is making unannounced changes of verb tense in our writing. Readers get confused when—out of the blue—we shift from present to past tense, or from past to the present or to the future. This gives the same feeling as a movie jerking and rewinding to past scenes, or lurching fast-forward to future scenes. Feel the confusion in this mixed-tense sentence: “She is singing beautifully when she lost her voice.” Consistently past: “She was singing beautifully when she lost her voice.” Another tense mix-up: “There were many complaints when our telephone operator answers calls in Taglish.” Consistently past: “There were many complaints when our telephone operator answered calls in Taglish.” Consistently present: “There are many complaints now that our telephone operator answers calls in Taglish.”

Of course, tense shifts are sometimes necessary: “We succeeded last month, we are succeeding this month, and we will work hard to succeed next month.” Note, however, that this is a compound sentence of three in different tenses; strictly speaking, the no-tense-shift rule is thus not violated. It is the perfect tenses that make tense shifts mandatory in the grammatical sense, as in this past-perfect usage: “The package we had waited for all week finally arrived this morning.” (Here, the earlier action takes the past perfect, and the later action the simple past.)

The third thing to avoid in writing is making unannounced shifts in point of view. Recall that language can take three points of view: the first person, the one speaking; the second person, the person spoken to; or the third person, the person spoken about. Changing from any of these points of view to another can be confusing. Problems arise particularly when the indefinite pronoun “one” is used and is later referred to as “he,” “she,” “her,” or “him.” Once we have chosen “one” at the start, we should consistently use “one” all throughout the sentence.

This construction is confusing: “If one thinks of the consequences of being careless, you can be sure that accidents will be rarer.” Consistent point of view: “If one thinks of the consequences of being careless, one can be sure that accidents will be rarer.” “If you think of the consequences of being careless, you can be sure that accidents will be rarer.” Also confusing: “If a woman wants to be loved, you must love in return.” Consistent: “If a woman wants to be loved, she must love in return.” “If you as a woman want to be loved, you must love in return.”

The final thing to avoid is shifting number in our sentences. Recall that in grammar, number is what makes a word singular or plural. In English, however, many nouns may be regarded as either singular or plural, like “class,” “club,” “team,” “crowd,” and “group.” Once we make our number preference, we must use it consistently to avoid cockeyed sentences like this: “The baseball team took its time practicing, but they became a great fighting machine in the field.” Consistent: “The baseball team took its time practicing, but it became a great fighting machine in the field.” “The baseball team took their time practicing, but they became a great fighting machine in the field.”

This essay first appeared in the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times and later appeared as Chapter 41 of “Part III – Usage and Style” of the author’s book English Plain and Simple: No-Nonsense Ways to Learn Today’s Global Language, © 2004 by Jose A. Carillo, ©2008 the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.