ACTIVE VS. PASSIVE VOICE

In passive voice: This week’s grammar tip is brought to you by a query from the peanut gallery!
In active voice: A query from the peanut gallery brought you this week’s grammar tip!

• What is the difference between active voice and passive voice?
  • In a sentence written in active voice, the subject does an action to an object.
    • Example: I ate ten pizzas.
  • In a sentence written in passive voice, this subject-action-object sequence is backward, making the object acted upon by the subject
    • Example: Ten pizzas were eaten by me.
• Which is preferred?
  • Active voice is usually preferred since passive is thought by some to be wordy, vague and generally inefficient.
    • Passive: Ten pairs of shoes were bought. (By whom?)
    • Active: Bob bought ten pairs of shoes. (That clears up most everything.)
• So is passive voice wrong?
  • Not entirely. Because it accentuates a different part of the sentence, passive voice is useful in certain situations:
    • To avoid owning up to something.
      • Passive: You are being dumped. (The lack of I in this sentence allows the speaker to shirk responsibility.)
      • Active: I am dumping you. (No getting around that.)
    • If the person doing the action isn’t known or isn’t important.
      • Passive: My car was stolen. (This focuses on the car.)
      • Active: Somebody stole my car. (Of course someone stole it… but that’s not exactly the most important part.
  • Passive voice can also be used to mix up sentence structure or focus on the more important aspect by putting it first.
    • All active: This house has a blue door, and a lock keeps it secure.
      
    • Some passive: This house has a blue door and is kept secure by a lock.
      • The idea of security might be more important than the lock itself, so you could use passive voice to accentuate that rather than the other way around.
        
• In summary:
  • Passive voice can be used—but only sparingly and strategically.