Welcome!
Welcome to the Learning Commons Quick Start Guide on active and passive voice!
Active and passive voice are two fundamental ways of writing that you should understand if you would like to be an effective writer in any discipline.
This guide will explain:
- What voice is
- How to determine voice in a sentence
- When to use active and when to use passive voices
Active and Passive Voice 101
Course Information
Course Level: Beginner
Time to Complete: 15 mins
Perfect for: Students in WRTG100/101, ENGL103, or anyone who needs a refresher.
Guide Creator: Kieran Wear
This video is an introduction to grammatical voice:
In this mini-course, we explore this in more detail:
- Tell whether a given sentence is in passive or active voice.
- Determine the best instances to use passive and active voices.
- Quickly fix sentences’ voices, often with the goal of introducing more active voice into your writi
Topic 1: Basic Rules and Definitions
In relation to grammar, “voice” is all about the subject and the action in a sentence. Throughout the following lesson, then, we will be covering how subjects can be best related to verbs. Verbs have many attributes, but among these, voice is key. There are two grammatical voices in English: active and passive. When the verb in a sentence has a certain voice, the whole sentence is changed, meaning that a sentence with a passive-voice verb is itself in passive voice.
Put simply: A sentence is in active voice when the subject is also the agent (the “doer”) of the action in the sentence.
Examples:
Shakespeare wrote Hamlet in his prime.
In Hamlet, the protagonist attempts to avenge his father’s death.
In the above examples, first “Shakespeare,” then the “protagonist” are the subjects. The subjects, in both of the examples, are doing the verb. In the first example, Shakespeare “wrote” Hamlet. In the second example, the protagonist attempts to “avenge” his father. These are, then, both in active voice.
A sentence is in passive voice when its subject has the action of the sentence “enacted” upon it. That is, when the verb of the sentence acts on the subject, the sentence is in passive voice.
Examples:
Hamlet was written by Shakespeare when he was in his prime.
In Hamlet, an attempt at revenge is made by the protagonist.
In both of the above examples, the subject (“Hamlet” in both sentences) has the verb (“written” and “attempt,” respectively) enacted upon it, making them both passive.
Your Turn: Test Your Understanding
Think you have a grasp of the information above? Test yourself!
Topic 2: Spotting Active and Passive Voice
Once you have an eye for it, spotting active and passive sentences is actually quite easy.
Active sentences generally follow a simple construction of subject → verb → object.
Examples:
Titus Andronicus rules his family with an iron fist.
Titus’s devotion to Rome is unequaled.
Passively voiced sentences have a quite different feel from that of active sentences. Put technically, passive sentences always contain a conjugated form of “to be” and a past participle of the verb. This is most easily demonstrated by changing the above examples into passive constructions.
Examples:
The Andronici family is ruled by Titus’s iron fist.
Rome experiences unequaled devotion from Titus Andronicus.
Your Turn: Test Your Understanding
Test yourself to see if you can demarcate between active and passive voice.
If you had trouble, particularly with several of the longer sentences above, remember to pare the sentence down to its parts. Underline the subject, the verb, and the object. Consider how these three parts of speech relate to one another in accordance with the rules that we outlined above. This approach will help to eliminate the white noise of all of the modifiers, adjectives, and other parts of speech that do not bear much relevance on whether a sentence is in active or passive voice.
Topic 3: Determining Which Voice to Use
Now that you (hopefully) can tell which voice a sentence has, it is vital to know when to use each.
When to Use Each
Active voice is what we most often find in creative writing, while passive voice is seen a bit more in academic (and especially scientific) writing. What this delineation means is that, roughly, Shakespeare writes in active voice, whereas literary theorists tend to incorporate passive voice when they write about Shakespeare’s works.
To get a sense of why the above is the case, take a look at the following two examples:
Macbeth morphs from loyal subject of the king to desperate power-grasper, and it is all because of a simple prophecy.
Macbeth is morphed from a loyal subject of the king to a desperate power-grasper, and it is all because of a simple prophecy.
The meaning of the two sentences may seem utterly identical, but examine what is emphasized in each. In the first (active) sentence, Macbeth is emphasized as the agent who is doing the morphing, while in the second, the morphing seems to be happening to him. The distinction is actually quite important. In the particular example of Macbeth, Shakespeare could be either showing us the dastardly effects of being a person who grasps for power (as the active sentence emphasizes) and/or that human nature or fate, or some other force external to us can move us to commit great evil.
Where does all of the above information take us in terms of grammar? It shows that active and passive voice are important ways of demonstrating action in a sentence, but that that choice is largely up to the writer. All of that said, however, there is a general ground-rule that we should all follow (even academic writers):
Lean toward using active voice more than passive.
That is, even if you are writing a stuffy paper on a playwright who has been dead for 400 years, only use passive voice when you really have to. Active voice is almost always more engaging and more clear than passive voice.
Your Turn: Test Your Understanding!
Topic 4: Self-Check
Additional Resources
Below are some great links to follow if you want to read more on active and passive sentences:
Video:
Active and Passive Introduction
Handouts/Webpages:
Handout from University of Waterloo
Passive Voice: When to Use it and When to Avoid It
If you would like to talk any of this through then we look forward to talking to you. Book an appointment!