Do your readers (and your brain) a favor

Two good reasons to avoid passive voice

In nearly all my writing coaching sessions, my clients and I discuss the passive voice. I point out instances of passive verbs in their writing samples. I explain what passive voice is, and that they ought to try to avoid using it whenever possible.

A typical response? “Okaayyy…” It often seems they’re not sure what I mean by those words, “passive voice,” and more importantly, why it matters.

It matters to your reader. Because a book is not about something, a book is for someone, as AJ Harper put it. (If you don’t own a copy of her book Write a Must-Read, you should.)

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When we eliminate or reduce passive voice (it sometimes works and is appropriate—but rarely), we help our reader stay engaged. But secondly, writing in the active voice (or any other ways we might improve our writing) helps us to think and grow. Critical thinking is endangered, and we must not let it die on our watch.

We could just have ChatGPT write for us or edit our work. We can ask Grammarly or AI to find specific writing errors. Why bother with learning what passive voice is, or why it matters?

We need to understand and execute good writing for the same reason kids still need to learn math, even though we have calculators and super computers. Because thinking matters. Critical thinking, intellectual pursuits, and even common sense seem to be on the decline. We must not give up our cognitive abilities, even as our phones erode our attention spans.

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In fact, I would argue that it is more important than ever to know what good writing is and practice it. We should self-edit for joy and for the love of words, but also because doing so is like eating vegetables and exercising: it ultimately benefits us.

Learning how to learn, thinking critically, are essential simply because we still need discernment. AI or ChatBots can give us information—but it might be wrong. They can generate answers or write an essay quickly—but it might not be good or even correct.

ChatGPT can tell you what to write, but it can’t tell you why. If you don’t why an answer is correct, you are one slippery slope step from not knowing IF it is correct.

Also, as I argued in this newsletter from the archives, we should learn to write well for the sheer joy of it.

Entire college courses cover foundational writing skills. But one of the most helpful books on good writing is Strunk & White’s Elements of Style. Written decades ago by William Strunk and E.B. White (better known as the author of Charlotte’s Web), this tiny volume was required reading in my writing classes in college.

The first two rules in Strunk’s as we affectionately called it, were

--eliminate needless words

--avoid the passive voice

My professor, who wielded a ferocious red pen, would circle verbs and write “passive!” or just “awk!” (for awkward) all over everyone’s papers. This man worked as a magazine editor, and his passion for ferreting out passive verbs inspired me.

These two rules are synchronistic. If you avoid the passive voice, you’re able to convey ideas with fewer words. Your writing becomes more direct, clearer, less wordy.

You can find passive verbs by looking for “to be” verbs—is, are, was, were—and just reworking the sentence.

The passive voice puts the one doing the action at the end of the sentence, or hides it altogether.

The ball was hit by the boy. (passive)

The boy hit the ball. (active)

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Sometimes, writers use the passive voice to shield the one taking action from direct blame or responsibility.

Despite the fact that taxes were increased, city services were eliminated.

Rewriting in the active voice requires us to name the person or people taking the action:

The city council passed a budget that increased taxes but voted to cut city services.

Passive voice muddles our writing, making it more wordy but less clear.

Here’s an example of how ferreting out the passive verbs in your work will improve it. (I took this from a newsletter I wrote last year.

Here’s an example of passive voice: “A collection was taken up by the neighbors for the family.”

When we put it into the active voice it becomes: “The neighbors took up a collection for the family.”

From there, we can look for compelling adjectives and stronger verbs to make the sentence clearer and stronger: “Generous neighbors paid the family’s bills.”

We cut the word count for the sentence nearly in half (11 words down to 6) but also made the sentence more interesting and engaging.

And that is the point. Because the rule (not mentioned but definitely implied in Strunk’s) is that the reader comes first. Your writing is for someone, and that someone has a thousand other distractions that might pull them from your page. You need to keep their attention, and writing in the active voice engages and holds the reader’s interest. It serves the reader, which is what your writing is supposed to do.

P.S. Here’s another article on self-editing from my blog archives.

P.S. If you want to go deeper into the grammar weeds, this article on grammarly.com offers a detailed examination of passive voice.