My column last week (“When even the passive voice isn’t enough,” EPS #2238) further emphasized that our writing shouldn’t totally rely on the active voice, and that the passive voice is by itself a powerful device for precisely crafting our sentences to an intended context. The active voice is arguably a very handy and effective default vehicle for expressing our ideas, but the passive voice is actually our most suitable choice for calling attention and giving more emphasis to the receiver of the action, to the instrument used in the action, or to the action itself.
CHART 1 - BASIC ENGLISH CLAUSE PATTERN IN THE ACTIVE VOICE
THREE BASIC CLAUSE PATTERNS IN THE PASSIVE VOICE
Again, let’s look closely at this basic English clause pattern: “Alicia [
subject, as
actor or doer of the action] gave [
verb, as the action] Roberto [
indirect object, as the beneficiary or receiver of the action], a tender hug [
direct object, as the goal].”
We already took up three ways by which the passive voice can change this basic clause pattern:
(1) make the indirect object the subject of the sentence: “
Roberto was given a tender hug by Alicia.”;
(2) make the direct object the subject: “
A tender hug was given by Alicia to Roberto.”; and
(3) make the act itself the subject: “
Alicia’s hugging of Roberto was tender.” The passive voice purposively diminishes the importance of the subject or actor so it can draw greater attention to the indirect or direct receivers of the action, or to the action itself.
CHART 2 – USEFULNESS OF THE PASSIVE VOICE IN SCIENCE
AND TECHNICAL WRITING
The passive voice becomes even more useful when it isn’t necessary or desirable to mention the subject or doer of the action at all. In science and technical writing, in particular, the passive voice is the conventional choice because the doer of the action is often obvious, unimportant, or unknown:
“An intensive search for an antidote to the raging avian flu virus is underway.” The active voice, in contrast, gives unwarranted importance to the unknown doer of the action at the expense of what’s being done, which in this case is more important. For that reason, the following active-voice sentence looks cockeyed and sounds off-key:
“Veterinary-disease researchers intensively seek an antidote to the raging avian flu virus.” CHART 3 – USEFULNESS OF THE PASSIVE VOICE IN NEWS JOURNALISM
And the passive voice is, of course, not all that rare even in news journalism, the ultimate redoubt of the active voice. Take this self-conscious, active-voice news lead:
“This reporter found out today that the complainants themselves in the Manila electioneering case had falsified evidence.” More circumspect and more logical is this passive construction that deliberately drops the reporter as the doer of the action:
“The evidence in the Manila electioneering case was falsified by the complainants themselves.” An even more compelling reason for using the passive voice has little to do with grammar but more with the art of communication itself. It’s the need for restraint, prudence, tact, and diplomacy in the workplace and in our day-to-day personal interactions. The active voice is particularly unsuitable for situations where it directly and unequivocally attributes an error, mistake, or failing to someone, thus squarely putting the blame on him or her. With the passive voice, we can be scrupulously correct without pointing an accusing finger at anybody, and deliberately keep certain things unstated to let others save face.
Assume, for instance, that your advertising agency has bungled its bid for a large consumer products account, and that the reason was that, at the last minute, your immediate superior doubled the budget you had recommended. This was mainly why the prospective client had chosen another agency whose proposed budget happened to be, well, about the same as your original figures. How injudicious it would be then for you to report the fiasco straightforwardly by using this active-voice statement:
“We lost the account because my boss insisted on doubling the proposed budget that I had strongly recommended, which of course the prospective client found excessively high. The competing agency's winning bid turned out to be only half as ours.” The active voice here, of course, tells one painful truth that won’t set you free—it is one, in fact, that’s guaranteed to instantly kill off careers and relationships. How much more politic and tactful to use the passive voice for that truth:
“Our proposed budget for the advertising campaign was inadvertently doubled shortly before our presentation to client, thus making it twice the bid of the agency that won the account.” Everybody in your agency would know what really happened anyway, so there’s no need to rub it in by using the active voice so flagrantly.
The choice between the active voice and the passive voice, then, isn’t just a matter of grammar. It strikes at the heart of the matter of our use of the language itself.
This essay, which first appeared in my weekly column “English Plain and Simple” in The Manila Times
, subsequently became Chapter 68 of my book Giving Your English the Winning Edge
, ©2009 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.Read this essay and listen to its voice recording in The Manila Times
:Crafting our sentences to their contextNext week:
Using extraposition for emphasis (January 23, 2025)
Visit Jose Carillo’s English Forum, http://josecarilloforum.com. You can follow me on Facebook and X (Twitter) and e-mail me at j8carillo@yahoo.com.
