Time to get active!

You may have heard talk of sentences being “active” or “passive”, and many of you already know what those terms mean! But for those of you who aren’t so confident, or who sometimes have difficulty identifying one from the other, let’s have a look at what active and passive sentences look like, and why the difference is important.

First: the definitions

The active voice is when you say that someone (or -thing) is doing an action, and the passive voice is when the action is done to the person or thing. In more grammatical terms, if the noun that you’re focusing on is acting as the clause’s subject, the sentence is active; if the noun is acting as the object of the clause, it’s passive.

Some examples:

Active
I ate a banana this morning.
Jodie’s computer refused to start this morning.

Passive
Chuck’s mailbox was hit by a car.
Mum’s cat was startled by something outside.

You can see a pattern in the way these statements are ordered: in the active examples, the order is roughly [subject] [action] [object], whereas in the passive ones the order looks more like [object] [action] (by) [subject]. If you want to change an active statement to a passive one, or vice versa, you just have to swap the order of the subject and object and tidy up the bits in between to make it make sense. For example:

Genevieve hosted that delightful ball.

That delightful ball was hosted by Genevieve.

How to spot passive language

There are a couple of different methods that you can use to identify passive language:

1. Searching for “by” phrases: As in the example I used above, many passive statements use the construction [object] [action] by [subject]. So if you keep an eye out for phrases beginning with the word “by” following directly after an action, you can identify some statements as being passive. For example:

   1. The police were informed of the matter by a concerned citizen.

   2. Before it can dock, the ship must be towed into port by a pilot boat.

   3. The mayor was greatly angered by the letter he received in the post this morning.

2. The “…by zombies” trick: Sometimes, however, the “by” statement is left out altogether, such as in cases where the person or thing performing the action is unknown. If you suspect that there might be a missing “by” statement, you can test your theory by adding one yourself along with a subject (which may be zombies, but really could be whatever you like). This trick doesn’t always work with commands or instructions written in the second person, but otherwise it’s a useful tool to have in your back pocket. Some examples of the trick in action are:

   1. The castle walls have been breached (…by zombies)!

   2. Chicago’s biggest ice-skating rink has been flooded (…by zombies).

   3. Charlie’s wound must be regularly cleaned and bandaged (…by zombies).

Why it’s important to know the difference

Now you know a bit more about how to identify when a sentence is written passively, but then what do you do about it? You may have heard in writing circles that it’s better to stick to the active voice as much as possible, but without much reason why.

As usual, there’s a bit more nuance than that. Using active language is generally clearer, particularly with regard to who’s doing what, so for most jobs it works well. However, there are times when you may want to be deliberately vague or non-committal about who or what is performing the action in question; there may not be a specific actor to name—or not one that is known, at least—or you may wish to deliberately obscure that piece of information. Purposefully omitting who performed an action is often a cause of suspicion or frustration when the motivation is clearly for someone to avoid responsibility for their actions (seen frequently in news stories), but it fiction it can be a good way to build tension and suspense.

And then, of course, you have to also think about the focus. Remember what I said earlier on about the difference between active and passive language being where the sentence is focused? If you’re more concerned with who did the thing, it’ll be much more natural to use the active voice. But if you want to pay more attention to the person who was acted upon, passive is the way to go.

You have heard it before, and I will say it again: there’s very little black and white in writing, and it all depends on what you’re trying to accomplish.