Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related The Passive Voice Taboo

All through school I was told that passive voice was a no-no. It makes writing boring and unpolished. Using active voice would make me a better writer.

Though, in the last few years, I've learned that it's more a stylistic choice. It can be used to emphasize or de-emphasize. In other words, it's just gotten a bad rap.

In my grammar class today, someone asked where the aversion to using passive voice may have come from. No one knew for sure, and the teacher wondered if this was a strictly American English construct.

So my question to you all is: Did you grow up learning that passive voice was "wrong" or "inferior" and where are you from?

Sara

Yeah, I definitely grew up learning that passive voice just didn't make an impacting paper. However it's 3am, and it just made my art history paper the appropriate length for the morning, so who am I to judge.

Jen

Sara, moved your thread into here because traditionally it's where grammar questions reside and you might get more answers in here, besides, than in Off Topic.

For myself, I've never been too bothered about passive voice one way or another. When I used to use WORD's grammar checker as well as its spellchecker, if it tagged something as passive voice I'd look it over and decide whether I liked it better its way or mine and then decide based on that.

But I have to say that WORD was the first time I ever encountered the concept of passive voice - I don't ever remember it being mentioned in school at all.

LabRat

Like Labrat, I was never taught anything at school about 'writing voices', if that's the correct term. Mind you, it's not surprising that we had a similar experience, since we're about the same age and both come from Scotland - ie, we went through the same education system.

I'm not a great believer in hard and fast rules for writing. Yes, they're useful as a starting point to ensure a certain standard of readability and flow, but the really good writing comes when you begin to break the rules. The trick is knowing which rules to break and how to break them.

Yvonne

I've definitely heard to avoid *over*-using passive voice. I think it's taught that way in school, just as not starting a sentence with "and" is, because otherwise kids will overuse it:

"They got off the bus. And they went into the house. And they got a snack."

etc. But generally a more-advanced writer is able to get away with starting a sentence with "and" because they know where and when it's acceptable, and they don't do it constantly. Same thing with passive voice, I think.

"They were dropped off at the house by the bus. A snack had been prepared for them by their mother. The youngest one was bitten by the family dog."

Ick. But when interspersed with active voice and used mainly when appropriate or for affect (I find it useful to avoid personal pronouns without making it very obvious to the reader that I'm doing so), I think it's okay.

Well, I never heard anything about "passive" vs "active" voice, either, and I'm as American as they come. I went all the way through junior high (what they call middle school, now) in California back when the school system out here was still a decent school system, and to high school in the Panama Canal Zone. The American schools there were tougher than the ones in the States. Never ran into it in college, either. The first time I encountered the whole idea was, like Labrat, when Word started to complain every time I used passive voice. Interestingly enough, I do pretty much the same as she does -- I look it over and decide whether I like it better their way or mine and if Word doesn't like my choice, too bad.

Nan

It depends what you're using it for. As an academic, I used passive voice all the time. My students - well, the department's students - were all taught to write their essays in passive voice, and would be pulled up if personal pronouns appeared. That's standard in UK/Irish universities. Academic articles and books are also written in passive voice.

(I just realised that most of that paragraph is written in passive voice!).

I was actually taken aback the first time I tried out Word's grammar checker and it told me that my sentence was in passive voice and should be changed. Since I was writing an academic article at the time, I pretty much told it to get lost. And that's when I first decided that Bill Gates knows nothing about grammar.

With writing fiction, I've discovered that active is much better than passive. I've been persuaded that wherever possible I should use active verbs, use pronouns, show who is performing an action, rather than the action being performed.

Though, even in fiction, I can see the place for passive voice: suppose you're writing a mystery or thriller, then I could see using passive, for example with this:

Ahead of them, though there was no-one in sight, the door opened slowly with a loud, rasping creak.

Who's opening the door? Well, that's part of the mystery. So there's not going to be a person in there performing the action. Passive works best.


Wendy

It's hard to remember for sure - I'm either too old or I slept through that part of the class - but I think I learned the same thing. That is, the passive voice is okay as long as you don't overuse it - so for some writing teachers, that sort of meant "don't use it."

And I'm with the others - I look at Word's suggestion(s) and decide if I like MY version better than its version... and if I like my way better, I leave it that way. And ignore Word's whining about it.

~Toc

I've definitely heard the "do not use passive voice", I think mostly in college. The reason was, when doing a paper, you want to use active voice. It makes more of an impact to the reader. Sort of like using "You must" or "Next, do" instead of "You should" when writing instructions.

However, it really does depend on writing. When you're trying to get a point across, use active. when it's fiction, passive is fine.

And let's see... where did I hear it. Definitely in college in North Carolina. Pretty sure I heard it in college in Pennsylvania. And maybe in high school in PA, as well? I forget.

I'd never even heard of passive voice until my dad showed my first fanfic (a Star Trek fic which I wrote before I'd even heard of fanfiction) to his best friend. This friend of his writes for a living (technical writing, mostly), and mentioned that the story was good, "for an outline."

I didn't understand what he meant, so I had him tear it apart for me with suggestions and constructive criticisms, at which point he said that the story was riddled with passive voice structures.

It wasn't until a few years later that there was any mention of it in high school English--and even then, I think it was LATE high school.

For awhile, I was so paranoid about using passive voice that I avoided it whenever I knew I was doing it--changed it all to active voice. But now, I think I've got a good balance.

No, the anti-passive voice thing isn't solely American. I'm English and I've certainly encountered it. Mind you, I've just had a look in two grammar books that I happen to have; only one has anything negative to say about the passive. Even there, the anti-comments are pretty guarded. Basically, the book's authors suggest that, while active voice might be more effective than the passive, this does not apply in all cases. Nor is it appropriate to always use the active voice in preference to the passive.

Like Yvonne and LabRat, though, I don't think I learned anything about writing voices at school. I think all my Englishe teachers cared about was making sure that our sentences always contained a finite verb and didn't start with conjunctions. (They were really big on punctuation, too.)

I certainly remember one classmate being told off for using short, snappy sentence fragments in a story she'd written on the basis that they weren't good English. When she protested that the books she was reading used similar constructions, our teacher said that when we were published authors with a wealth of experience behind us, we could do what we liked. In the meantime, our English had to obey the rules she was teaching us.

So, yes, I've come across the anti-passive argument, but not, as far as I can remember, in school.

Wendy has more or less beaten me to what I wanted to say about academic writing. Like her, I spent years in academia. There, I learned pretty quickly that everything should be written in third person passive voice. In other words, instead of saying: "I distributed a questionnaire..." I would have to write "The questionnaire was distributed..."

Nonetheless, I definitely picked up that passive voice was frowned upon in fiction. I'm not sure whether I learned that up from grammar checkers or from somewhere else, though.

In my current job, which is blessedly far removed from academia, I have a boss who is very into Plain English. He returned the first couple of reports I wrote for him with a number of suggestions for toning down the academic tenor of my language. (I thought I had, but clearly I hadn't gone far enough...) Certainly, since then, I've learned to restrict my use the passive.

Actually, I think I've learned a lot about writing since I started my current job. I now make a conscious effort to use shorter sentences and to avoid starting sentences with 'it'.

Short answer... Passive voice is okay in certain contexts and, more generally, in moderation. However, when you want fast paced action, the active voice seems to work much more effectively.

Chris (who just rewrote that last sentence to avoid... the passive voice.)

My teachers hammered "Thou shalt not use passive voice!" into me from middle school on up to college level creative writing classes. Even on academic papers some of my science teachers would insist on writing lab reports by saying something ridiculous like: The experimentor applied the following forumula to achieve maximum density. That, rather than: The following formula was applied to achieve maximum density. All for the sake of avoiding passive voice! It got to be pretty silly in my opinion.

Passive does have its uses, though I tend to believe they are usually stylistic. For instance, one can use passive to de-emphasize the doer in favor of the receiver of an action. The problem I have with passive arises when someone uses it too frequently, or sacrifices clarity as a result.

I've been an English teacher (50 years ago), newspaper writer, political speech writer, report writer, and Fanfic writer, and I have come to understand that one uses active and passive voices at different times to produce different effects. I never taught that it was a no-no, but there are instances when it weakaens the effect of what you are trying to achieve. This is especially true in fiction writing.

Like Miz Rat, Nan and others, I decide for myself if Word's grammar correcter is appropriate or not. Most of the time it isn't, but sometimes it is.

And oh, yes, born and schooled in the South, I taught in the Midwest and West and now live in the Northwest, all in the USA. ( How's that for mixing voices in the same sentence?)

Jude

I'm a big proponent of using active voice whenever possible and appropriate. I know that in academia and other technical writing, passive voice is preferred and for good reason. But in fiction, if the goal is to bring a story to life, it makes sense to me that using active verbs and having the characters act rather than be the recipients of action would be a better choice.

That being said, I find that I automatically write in the passive voice and use a lot of passive verbs. I have to work hard to change that, so it's my personal challenge.

Lynn

I've been hammered about the passive voice for as long as I can recall (through both UK and US school systems). As Wendy says, academically speaking, it's highly encouraged, but in writing fiction it's not considered appropriate. But I think there's definitely a place for both.

One of the biggest criticisms leveled against writers in of romance languages when they are translated into English is that they don't "show" enough because so much is in the passive voice. So part of me wonders if this action-orientation isn't some kind of obsession on our parts.

But I definitely do use active voice more in writing fiction nonetheless. In English at least it works well.

Right now, I have a headache that won't let me think straight, so I can't remember what I've been taught about passive voice. I'll be back later.

But I have to ask about Wendy's example:

How is that passive? I thought passive needed the verb 'to be' in the structure, as in 'the door was opened slowly'. I understand that the meaning is indeed passive, but is the structure?

See ya,
AnnaBtG.

Uh... there's nothing passive about that paragraph except the last sentence. It's past tense, but not passive voice. If you wrote "As an academic, passive voice was used by me all the time" that would be passive voice. In active voice, the subject performs the action (I used). In passive voice, the subject receives the action (passive voice was used).

I was taught not to use passive voice back when dinosaurs still roamed the earth. It's still frowned upon but like any writing, there are exceptions to the rule. One of the big problems with passive voice is that is can create awkward sentence. One clue that something is passive is the use of the word "by."

This sentence is interesting. It's passive but the agent, or person performing the action, has been left out. You could re-write it in active voice by saying "Scholars write academic articles and books in passive voice." In the original sentence, "by scholars (or whomever)" is understood but not stated.

I've struggled with passive voice for ages and have been studying it lately. So I had a nifty site bookmarked.

I learned the prohibition against passive voice in school, but I can't remember now whether it was in junior high or high school. Of course, that was back in the dark ages when we were taught to diagram sentences, too.

I had a devil of a time handling academic writing when I started doing that as part of my job. I was forbidden to use personal pronouns, but I felt constrained not to use passive voice, too, so you can imagine what a joke that was. I did quite well in college when I wrote history papers because they were in 3rd person anyway, but writing a grant proposal in the 3rd person was painful.

I spend part of one class session dealing with voice nowadays. Since almost none of my students are bound for academic writing, I explain that the general preference is for active voice, to show the actor doing the action. However, I also point out that choice of voice depends on the speaker's/writer's purpose. When I am describing the attack on me that took place the previous night, I will naturally use passive voice because I am the person of interest in the scenario rather than the unknown attacker: I was mugged, not Someone mugged me. Purpose determines the use of voice as well as so many other writing choices.

Here in Greece, where I learned English as a foreign language, there was no 'passive voice taboo' as you define it. We were just taught how and when to use it and when not, the basic rule being 'When you want to emphasize the actor, use active; when you want to emphasize the action or don't know who the actor is, use passive'. Kinda like in Sheila's example.

The examinations for various ESL certificates, however, include writing exercises such as 'formal letter', 'essay', 'proposal' etc. where it is recommended to use passive voice whenever possible. The only piece of advice about not using passive is that, if you've put 'by XXX' too many times, then you've done something wrong: you either need to omit it or to use active. (Although I can't remember whether I was actually given that piece of advice, or it's just something I realized over the years.)

See ya,
AnnaBtG.

Well, I'm an American educated in Virginia and New Jersey and I have never heard of "passive" voice until now. If the teacher thought something sounded better one way than another they would just tell you. I can't remember exactly how they explained it but I know for sure that they never used the term "passive voice". I know one teacher was big on what she called "first person".

I was always good at doing History or English term papers(usually A's) in school but in fiction writing (B's & C's) I'm terrible. In 9th grade my teached said he based my grades not on the actual story but for my ideas and told me if I had written more I could get an A. That is the reason I don't write any fanfic stories. The ideas come but I can't flesh out a story.

Like so many of you I agree that passive has it's place. I do have a feeling that some of you are so concerned about your writing style that you miss the fact that you confuse your pronouns. Example:

....He took his hand and gave it a squeeze. When what you meant to say was...He took her hand and gave it a squeeze.

The first time I came across something like that I thought why is he doing that to himself. Then I went back and re-read it and realized the writer had gotten the his/her confused.

Regardless of your confused pronouns or "passive voice" I have to applauded all that post stories here to be read and critiqued for having a ton more courage than I. So I will continue to enjoy your stories regardless of the "passive voice taboo" and do Beta-reading when asked.