Don’t you wish that you could have stayed awake back in your junior high school English class? If you had, you might be able to interact with the Microsoft Grammar tool more effectively. How many times do you get the little green line under a sentence and when you right click on it, if you are lucky, the software provides a “better” sentence? More often than not, you’ll get the generic message “Passive voice, consider revising”. To that, most people will simply click IGNORE.

We didn’t understand passive voice when we were 12 years old so how are we expected to understand it now, decades (and decades) later. What’s the fuss over passive sentences?

Impact on the Reader

The appearance of a document and the arrangement of the headings and paragraphs encourage a reader to start reading, but it’s the quality of the words and sentences that keeps him or her turning over the pages. The quality of the words and sentences also convey an image of you and the organization or department you represent when you write.

A reader who encounters well-constructed sentences that are direct and informative will envisage a writer who knows what he or she is talking about, and will react positively to the writer's suggestions. But a reader who encounters wordy constructions, vague or ambiguous statements, or abrasive expressions, will gain an image of a writer who is unsure about the subject. The reader may even doubt the validity of the information, and react negatively to the writer's suggestions. If you are writing a proposal, you cannot afford a negative response from your reader.

Write Emphatically

The following four sentences contain the same information, but each presents it in a different way. Which presents its information most efficiently, most emphatically?

1. We were represented at this year's business management conference by Karen Hunt.
2. Our representative at this year's business management conference was Karen Hunt.
3. At this year's business management conference we were represented by Karen Hunt.
4. Karen Hunt represented us at this year's business management conference.

Most business managers prefer sentence D because it is direct and emphatic.

The Active Voice

This direct, emphatic construction is known as the active voice. The active voice uses a simple who did what sentence construction:

The Passive Voice

In the previous four sentences, A, B, and C are written in the passive voice. The passive voice uses a what...was done...by whom construction. If the short sentences in the list above had been written in the passive voice, they would have seemed much less emphatic:

Note that the word "by" appears in the first three sentences, and is implied in the fourth (i.e. A refund is requested [by me] .) You can often identify when you are using the passive voice by searching for the word "by" and when you use the helping verb “to be” in any form: is, was, were.

Write in the Active Voice

We recommend that you write in the active voice for "tell" messages, and even for most "sell" communications. The active voice will help make your writing seem much more definite, much more confident. To write in the active voice, you need to

• Place a "doer" (a person or object) at the front of the sentence to start the action, as in Dave Cullen...issued and A broken cable...stopped .
• If you are the "doer," write in the first person ("I" or "We"), as in I request... .

If you do not know who the doer is, or prefer not to name the doer, then you have to write in the passive voice. For example:

The budget was cut by 15%. (You don't know who cut it.)

When you use the active voice, you will find that your documents are much shorter and easier to read.

The next time you read a report and wonder why you don't remember anything about it, go back and see if it was full of passive sentences. One of the major consequences of having too many passive sentences is that the reader is not fully comprehending or retaining the information. Is there a report that you read weeks ago that you can still recall specific information from? Go back and see if that one is written with clear, concise and direct active sentences.

Please email me your ideas or thoughts at LisaM@rgilearning.com and I can address them in a future article.

© 2006, RGI Learning Lisa Moretto is the President of RGI Learning, Inc. For 15 years she has helped engineers improve their oral and written communication skills. Visit www.rgilearning.com or call (585) 461-3617 to learn about RGI's courses.

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