Verbs are probably the most exciting part of speech because they have various qualities that other parts of speech wouldn’t dare to dream about having. Verbs have tense, verbs have mood, verbs can be either transitive or intransitive — and verbs have voice.
There are two verb voices: active and passive. And it all depends on how you use the verb in a sentence.
If the subject of the verb is actually performing the action of the verb, we call it active voice:
- Jane drove the car to school.
- He threw the ball.
- The thief ran off with a bag of jewelry.
If the subject of the verb is not performing the action of the verb, we call it passive voice:
- Jane was driven to school. Jane is still the subject, but she didn’t do the driving, so we have passive voice. Sometimes the doer is mentioned in the sentence: Jane was driven to school by her brother. Brother still isn’t the subject; it is the object of the preposition by. Jane’s brother drove her to school is in the active voice.
- The ball was thrown. Ball is the subject, but the ball didn’t do anything, so this is also an example of passive voice.
- The jewelry store was robbed. The store didn’t do anything, so this is another example of passive voice.
The general rule is to write using active voice most of the time. It is — well — more active, and that is a good thing.
However, there are times when you either want or need to write in the passive voice:
- You don’t know who did it.
- You don’t care who did it.
- You neither know nor care who did it.
The school was built in 1970. Passive voice because you probably don’t really care who built it. You may not know either.
She was awarded the title of Miss Apple Blossom. The important thing is that she was given the title. We probably don’t care who gave it to her.
That song was first released in 1995. In this case we might really care who first sang that hit song, but we can’t remember. Of course, nowadays, you can find anything out by just “googling it.”
I remember once when I was a newspaper reporter (way back before the internet) that I once did not get the name of the perpetrator of some story. The only solution — if I really could not have found out with my tight deadline — was to write the lead in the passive voice.
We tend to speak and write in the passive voice when we are not emphasizing who did it — when the important thing is that it was done. Here are sentences that fare well in the passive, whether or not we know who did it.
- I was given an award for my math skills in 6th grade. (It is important that I got the award, not who gave it to me.)
- The cake was decorated incorrectly when I picked it up from the bakery. (We don’t really care who decorated it.)
- He was elected President in 1990. (It is obvious who elected the President, so we don’t need to say it.
On the other hand, it is possible that the doer in those sentences matters a lot — so much that you want to use active voice:
- President Clinton gave me an award for my math skills in 6th grade. (emphasizes who gave the award as the important thing)
- My cousin, who is the chief baker at the grocery store, put the wrong names on the wedding cake! (emphasizes who made the mistake)
- The new Liberty Party elected him President in 1990.(emphasizes that it was a new party that was instrumental in electing the President — we aren’t talking about the United States, of course!)
We do tend to instinctively use the voices in the best way. However, sometimes a writer will overuse the possessive, which usually makes the writing wordy:
TOO MUCH PASSIVE – She was given a huge birthday cake by her mother, who had spent all day baking and decorating. Then when the cake was gone she moved over to open the mountain of gifts that were given to her by her big family. A fun time was had by all!
REWRITE – Her mother gave her a huge birthday cake after spending all day baking and decorating. After everyone was done eating cake, she opened the mountain of gifts her huge family had given her. A fun time was had by all OR Everyone had a fun time.