Why I Love Passive Voice

One should use passive voice, when it is reasonable to use it. Unfortunately, "they" tell us not to use passive voice, when writing in English.

Passive voice should be used, when it is reasonable to use it. Okay, maybe that example was a little contrived, but there are plenty of cases where passive voice is useful. Unfortunately, passive voice is shunned in the English language. Passive voice has a number of benefits over active voice, in many settings. First off, it becomes easier to focus on the action or goal, rather than on the person who is performing the action or trying to obtain the goal.

Many languages use passive voice. Actually, languages don't use anything, because they're not able to act. But passive voice is indeed used in many languages. Honestly I probably became comfortable with passive voice when studying Latin. It's not necessarily that it's promoted in Latin, but rather that its use is clearly opposed in English.

Marianne Stenger wrote an article about passive voice, and some reasons why it is frequently avoided. Among other reasons, she points out that passive voice sentences can be wordier.

1. The house is cleaned once a week by Sarah.”

2. “Sarah cleans the house once a week.”

Indeed, if we're interested in the actor, passive voice should be avoided. If we're not interested in the actor, but rather the event itself, then passive voice is actually preferable. I intentionally wrote a number of sentences in passive voice, to emphasize this issue. It's important to keep an article personal, and yet, impersonal. I don't want to assume who my readers are. I don't want to use "we" and assume that my readers are also authors. I could get wordier and use sentences like "an author should avoid passive voice." But if the whole benefit of passive voice is that it is less verbose and confusing, then that sentence runs counter to the benefits of active voice.

Being Indirect

English is very direct. It's one reason why active voice is so common. Languages and the societies in which they develop influence each other, and English speakers are often comfortable with being direct. Japanese culture, on the other hand, tends to be more diplomatic, formal, and indirect. As a result, passive voice is often employed (StackExchange Answer).

Psychology, Memory, and Blame

Aside from the literary aspect of passive voice, the topic is of importance in psychology. I'm a fan of linguistics and how language influences thought. The preference for passive or active voice can have a significant impact on memory and has possible cultural significance.

As I wrote in my Medium article on the importance of language in human cognition, whether someone is using passive or active voice in a given scenario can impact their memory. Those who use active voice are more likely to remember who acted, and place blame on the individual. Those who use passive voice are less likely to remember who acted, and instead focus on the action.

Going back to Japanese for a moment, because Japanese culture tries to avoid placing blame, passive voice is often used in the way discussed here. It's called the adversative passive, in which the result is implied to be a negative one (Wierzbicka 2009).

Final Thoughts

Active voice is direct, and is useful when assigning blame. Passive voice is useful when the result, rather than the actor matters. Authors should be mindful of these ideas and write in the proper voice, by first deciding what is more important, the action or the actor. In many cases, it is actually what happened that matters rather than the person who performed the action.

In other cases, such as when an author is trying to elicit an emotional response against a villain, active voice is probably going to be preferable. If the villain kills a character, and it isn't a mystery novel where we don't know who the villain is, then it's probably important to reference the villain by name. 

While the focus of this discussion is on fiction writing, I'm a huge fan of passive voice in research papers. Does it matter if I am the one who added 500ml of solution to a beaker? It doesn't. Indeed, both the authors of a paper and the researchers should be more or less irrelevant.

What matters is the method and result. Only when the authors are giving their perspective, such as when they're writing the conclusion, should active voice be preferred, because it helps ensure that the readers are aware that the conclusion is the view of the authors, rather than a result of the research itself.

Originally published on the Universal Artist Guild blog on Medium