There’s nothing wrong with the passive voice, so please cut it out with broad, generalized writing advice discouraging its use. The passive voice can be very useful. Especially in legal and technical documents, there are many cases in which one might prefer to de-emphasize or not mention the actor at all it might be preferable to de-emphasize or not mention the actor at all. That’s exactly why the passive voice exists.
Just yesterday a colleague who drafted a text intended to explain a complex subject to laypersons found himself in a dilemma. Our supervisor told him not to use the second person (“you”) because that was too casual. However, Microsoft Word kept redlining his text to recommend he avoid passive voice, which in this case was in my view a very appropriate option.
I have had bosses who just repeat the mantra “avoid passive voice” without understanding why. They read somewhere (probably freaking Strunk and White, the worst writing manual ever) that the active voice is exciting and breaks through brick walls at superspeed, and the passive voice gives people head colds and constipation. So they keep repeating as some kind of rote dictat, without ever thinking about the context and whether passive voice might be more useful or smoother or more appropriate for the situation.
“One” exists for just this usage, one feels. Not too casual, not too passive, that neutral third person (or fourth person, depending on your view) feels just right.
The English language is beautiful in all of its varied and sundry forms, and I believe in variety in both my speaking and writing in order to maximize its usage. I’m not a big fan of any English language rule that limits the usage of the language itself.
This is really an argument about context appropriateness. I’m certain you could provide compelling examples of useful passive voice to any of the critics and they would agree with the usage. Like you, I reserve the right to use passive voice, when appropriate.
That’s not a problem with the writing or the usage. The writer’s intent might be to sidestep responsibility; that’s an intent issue, not a writing style issue.
I teach undergraduates. They’re generally oblivious and unintentional. It’s a revelation to them that sentences like “The Cherokee were sent west” or “The Phase 3 participants were administered a dosage that proved to be cumulatively toxic” disguise the agent of the action.
I believe it. But if your grasp of style and grammar is at the level where you can only keep binary rules in your head, “passive voice is bad” is a better rule than “passive voice is good.”
Grammar checking software is sort of in a bind with that. In the entire body of all written work in the English language, active voice is preferable in most sentences. There are situations, though, where passive is not just all right but a better choice. My hot take on it is not to use passive voice unless you have a reason for it that you could explain to someone. In any case, software isn’t capable of understanding context, so it either has to flag everything that appears to be passive or nothing.
That’s not the only thing the software isn’t sophisticated enough to understand. One time I had a copyediting job where the author was talking about battleships with “six gun turrets.” No, Word, it’s not “six-gun turrets.” The ship has multiple gun turrets, and if you count them, the answer is six. But I see why it wanted the hyphen.
My broad take is don’t give people general rules on active or passive voice. Just explain which is which. If someone brings you a specific work to critique then point out why active or passive voice is better in that specific context.
In other words, my broad rule is the inverse of yours: Don’t tell people that either active or passive voice is better unless you are critiquing a specific piece of writing.
It’s like saying “Writing in English is better than writing in Welsh, because way more people speak English.” That may be completely wrong advice for any particular piece of writing. So, just refrain from the broad rule in the first place.
Yeah, I get what you’re saying, and I agree. I’m not going to proactively try to impose rules. I was speaking from the point of view of someone who gets asked for such critiques.
Sure, passive voice definitely has its place, but sometimes an “are you sure you want to use passive voice?” reminder is good. Someitmes I catch myself in a work email saying something like “this is done” and change it to “I completed this”.
Passive voice blows chunks. I used to talk that way and it sucks.
We’ve got eternity more or less to be a birth date and a death date on a tombstone or whatever. Only a short time to be alive. Embrace life and be actively involved. I’m fine with passive voice having to justify its every instance of being used. That is better.