A Few Nice Words About the Passive Voice

Voice is the quality in verbs that shows whether a subject is the actor or is acted upon.
Studies show that passives are used least in conversation and most in scientific writing.
The chart goes like this:
LEAST USAGE------------------------------FREQUENT USAGE
Conversation-----fiction-----journalistic writing-----scientific writing
(Huddleston, 1971 & Shintani, 1979)

We generally expect effective writing to be vigorous and direct. In nearly all

circumstances, the active voice achieves vigor and directness better than the passive
voice, because in the active voice the doer of the action, the actor, is the center of the
sentence. In some cases, however, using the passive voice makes sense.
These are some guidelines as to when passives are often used appropriately (culled from
many sources):

Pay particular attention to #3 and #4, especially for business writing where elements of
tact, diplomacy, and objectivity are often important.

Passives are appropriate:

1. When the actor (the person or thing doing the action of the verb) is redundant (i.e.,
easy to supply and therefore not expressed).

Grapes are grown in California. (The actor here is "vintners," which is not necessary.)

2. When the writer wants to emphasize the receiver or result of the action.

Six people were killer in the fire. (As opposed to: The fire killed six people).

3. When the writer wants to be tactful or evasive by not mentioning the agent.

Kristin was given some bad advice. (As opposed to: David gave Kristin some bad
advice.)

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4. When the writer wants to make a statement sound more objective without revealing the
source of the information.

It is believed that she will announce her resignation today.

5. When the writer wants to retain the same grammatical subject in successive clauses,
even thought the function of the noun changes form.

Kristin finished her paper, but she was exhausted by the task.

6. When the passive is more appropriate than the active (usually non-complex sentences).

ACTIVE: The results of this second language learning experiment tend to confirm the
hypothesis, as Bogen, Paivio, Cohen and Witkin suggest, that students learn in different
ways.

PASSIVE: The results of this second language learning experiment tend to confirm the
hypothesis that students learn in different ways as suggested by Bogen, Paivio, Cohen
and Witkin.

7. When the theme is given information and the agent is new information.

What a lovely tie! Thank you. It was given to me by Kristin.

Passives can change the meaning of a sentence, so one should be careful when using
them. Here are the classic examples:

Everyone in the room speaks two languages. (i.e., any two languages per person)

Two languages are spoken by everyone in the room. (i.e. two specific languages that
everyone speaks.)

Few people read many books. (i.e., there are few people who read lots of books.)

Many books are read by few people. (there are many books that are read by few people.)