Passive voice: what it is and how to avoid it

This post was originally published in 2008.

You may have heard the term “passive voice” mentioned before. For those who haven’t heard it or would like some clarification on it, I thought I’d say a few words on the topic. It is one of the most prolific issues in communication.

First off, using the passive voice isn’t inherently wrong. But overuse of it makes messages weak and boring.

Passive voice occurs when a speaker turns the subject of a sentence into an object.

Consider these 2 sentences:

My dinner was eaten by me.

I ate my dinner.

You will notice the second sentence is the stronger of the two. That’s because a stronger relationship exists between the action verb and the subject.

That strong relationship makes better writing. Better writing keeps readers interested and engaged.

The most common method of writing in the passive voice uses forms of the verb “to be”: is, are, am, was, were, and so forth. You could detect the passive voice by looking for these words.

There are occasions when the “to be” verb is used, but the sentence isn’t in the passive voice. For example:

My career objective is to become a teacher in your school district.

This isn’t the passive voice because the subject (my career objective) is tied to the verb directly. It is a weak sentence. In my opinion, we should also avoid these sentences.

I could write this particular sentence as follows:

I aspire to teach in your school district.

This sentence is stronger because it uses a stronger verb and the speaker takes more responsibility for what is said.