Active Voice vs. Passive Voice: Everything You Should Know

Active voice stresses the doer of action; passive voice highlights the recipient. Use active for clarity, but passive when the doer is unknown or unimportant. Knowing when to use each improves writing.

Ryan Holiday

Published on: 27-09-2024

Reviewed by: Jeff Goins

In the English Language, grammar is the source of communication in an effective manner. Like many other worldwide languages, the same is the case to follow the writing rules and patterns to write a good piece of writing.

Linguists help to understand the usage of grammar regarding morphology, pragmatics, syntax or semantics etc. There are minor differences in all the grammatical terms. These mild contrasts change their usage and purpose in the writing.

Research into literary style (e.g., Biber et al., 1999) suggests that active voice is predominant in narrative writing, while passive voice is used strategically for effect.

As we know about the general use of verbs, subjects and objects to make our writing effective and meaningful. In some cases subjects are the recipient of an action or sometimes the subject performs an action of the verb.

Yes! You are thinking absolutely right. I’m talking about the most frequently used voices in the language. It's a little bit tricky and complex to understand the variation between active and passive voice sentences.

In this article, we’ll discuss all the minor and major about active and passive voice in detail that helps you to enhance your writing credibility.

Active Voice vs. Passive Voice

The difference between active voice and passive voice lies in the way to structure a sentence. It specifies the relationship between the subject and the action of the verb.

1. Active voice:

In an active voice sentence, the subject of the sentence performs the action. The structure typically follows the Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) order.

Structure: Subject + Verb + Object
Example: The chef (Subject) cooked (Verb) the meal (Object).

2. Passive voice

Grammar rules state that in a passive voice sentence, the action is performed on the subject. And the object of the active sentence becomes the subject of the passive sentence.

It transforms who is doing the action to who or what is receiving the action.

Structure: Object + Form of "to be" + Past Participle + (by Subject)
Example: The meal (Object) was cooked (Form of "to be" + Past Participle) by the chef (Subject).

Look, it’s not as difficult to understand. You just have to memorize the structures of both sentences. Structures are the main things to learn or to use correctly in making sensible sentences.

What are the functions of active and passive voice?

Let’s have a look to see how active and passive voices perform unalike functions.

Functions of Active voice	Functions of Passive voice
It is used to highlight the performer of the action.	Passive voice transforms the subject to the action.
This voice uses simple and easy to understand sentence structure.	It is often more formal and is commonly used in scientific, academic, or technical writing.
It supports straightforward sentence structures.	This tone is useful when the subject is unknown and irrelevant.
Active voice is preferred in most types of writing, especially in narratives, instructions, and persuasive etc.	Passive voice can be effective in descriptive or explanatory writing, where the process or result is more important than the performer.
It makes statements feel more forceful.	It softens the tone of saying something.

Hope so, you get some points about how or where to use active and passive voice sentences. Don’t panic! There's much more to know that may help you to clarify the concepts.

Tips to change passive voice to active voice?

Let me explain to you some tips that might benefit you to convert passive voice sentences into active voice.

Firstly, you have to identify the sentence whether it’s an active or passive voice by viewing its structure.
You can identify the sentence structure by notice that passive sentences have a form of the verb "to be" (am, is, are, was, were, etc.) followed by a past participle (e.g., was written, is made).
The subject of the sentence is being acted upon rather than performing the action (e.g., The letter was written by John).
Now, look for the word or phrase that represents who or what is performing the action. This may appear after the word "by" in the passive sentence (e.g., by John).
Place the performer of the action in the subject position of the sentence.
Change the verb form from passive to active.
Move the original subject (the receiver of the action) to the object position.

Adjust the sentence to make sure that it is grammatically correct and makes sense after the rearrangement.
You can use the best rewording tool to make sure that your passive sentence is accurate. This tool helps to reword the sentence if there is any mistake in it.

Have you understood this? You can read the steps once more for clarity.

Now, we move forward to discuss where using passive voice is beneficial and at which points you don’t need to use passive voice.

When should I use passive voice?

This is the main point to discuss about using passive voice at appropriate places. Let’s have an analysis of some situations where it is necessary to use passive voice sentences.

1. To highlight the results of an action

There is a need to use passive voice sentences for showing the importance to the actions as compared to who performed the action.

Let’s have an example like “The vaccine was developed to combat the virus”.

In this sentence the main focus is on the development of the vaccine, not the developers. In these situations, passive voice sentences are preferred to use.

2. For unknown subject

In some cases, we don’t know about who is performing the action. In these cases it is also good to use passive voice sentences.

Let’s have an example to clarify you, “The documents were misplaced”.

In this sentence you can see that the person who misplaced the document is unknown and not mentioned. So, passive voice sentences cover it in an efficient way.

3. To maintain formality

In formal writing it is important to maintain the flow and consistency in the sentence. Passive voice sentences support objectivity and formality that are mostly preferred in academic, scientific, or formal type of writing.

Let’s suppose an example of the sentence from a general research paper, “The study was conducted over a period of five years.”

It shows how formal tone is used in writing passive voice sentences.

4. Avoiding blames

You can use passive voice sentences where you need to soften the tone or avoid placing direct blame on anyone.

Have a look at an example, “Mistakes were made.”

In this sentence the person who made the mistakes is missing.

Active and passive voice examples

Here are some examples to show the structuring of active and passive voice sentences in different types of sentences.

Example 1: Simple sentence

Active voice: The chef cooked a delicious meal.
Passive voice: A delicious meal was cooked by the chef.

Example 2: Negative sentence

Active voice: The artist has not finished the painting.
Passive voice: The painting has not been finished by the artist.

Example 3: Imperative sentence

Active voice: Write the report.
Passive voice: Let the report be written.

Example 4: Interrogative sentences

Active voice: Did the manager approve the project?
Passive voice: Was the project approved by the manager?

Example 5: Complex Sentences

Active Voice: The committee will review the proposal after the meeting ends.
Passive Voice: The proposal will be reviewed by the committee after the meeting ends.

Other Interesting blogs:

Wrapping up

As we discussed in detail about the difference between active and passive voice sentences, we learned that there are certain situations where passive voice sentences are preferred to use to make meaningful sentences.

Active and passive voice sentences are different on the basis of their sentence structures. It's not as tricky to use passive voice sentences. Make sure about your identifications of structures.

Practice hard to overcome the mistakes. It’s ok if you made the mistakes in the beginning. Just keep in mind that beginners will become experts after hard work.

Frequently asked questions

1. Which voice of a sentence is more preferable in formal writing?

Passive voice sentences are preferred for formal writing like academic, technical or others.

2. Does an active voice have complex sentence structure?

Active voice sentences are written in easy and simple sentence structure as compared to passive voice sentences.

3. State an example of any interrogative sentence in both voices.

The example is:

Active Voice: Will they announce the winner soon?
Passive Voice: Will the winner be announced soon?