Monica Valentinelli: Author, Game Designer and Consultant

Posted on June 17, 2007 - by Monica Valentinelli

Freelance Writing Tip #24: Passive vs. Active Voice

One of the things that comes into play in writing is finding your own style. I will be the first to admit that there isn’t “one correct way” to write. However, I’m sure that you can expect that proper grammar and spelling are two essentials to being taken seriously as a writer.

As I mentioned in a previous post about word conservation, writing styles have, no doubt, changed over the years. If word conservation is the result of how modern communication has affected writing over the years, using the “active voice” is a tool to pare down wordiness or the direct opposite of “passive voice“.

What’s ironic about writers who use passive voice, is that this isn’t the first style of writing they learned. One of my college professors once used a similar analogy to this one in one of my workshops: When you learn to write in grade school, you use active voice. Sally ran a mile. Jim threw the rock. Nancy read a book. Then, somewhere along the line you started learning more verbs and how to conjugate them. So, then you learned to say Sally had run a mile. Jim had thrown the rock. Nancy was reading a book. The final step to your learning, was to write essays and sound intelligent. At the same time, you’re submersed in 18th and 19th century literature that is fraught with verbose passages. The mile was run by Sally. The rock was thrown by Jim. The book was read by Nancy.

After using similar examples, the professor turned to the class and said, “Learning how to write active voice is a lot like un-learning all that you’ve been taught since grade school.”

I’d even take that a step further, and say that sometimes de-constructing your work into [noun] + [description] + [verb] or other simple sentence constructions are great ways to clarify your sentence style.

While I reiterate that there is no “one way” to write, the most common form of writing today is to write using the “active voice.” Whether it be a direct influence of the internet, blogs, long work days or what-have-you, if you only have three seconds to grab someone’s attention, the words need to pop off the page.

Passive voice can be used stylistically, to indicate historical periods or nostalgic themes. You may also be instructed to write this way for legalese or insurance policies. If you’re not, I would strongly recommend reading your work out loud to catch yourself before “your writing was submitted by you to be reviewed by an editor for publication.” Once you fall into that trap, it is very hard for an “editor to review your writing submission for publication.”

Related posts:

1. Writing Exercises #1: Learning Word Conservation
2. Don’t Rely on History : Freelance Writing Tip #34
3. Freelance Writing Tip #16: Write to Sell
4. Freelance Writing Tip #11: Categorize Professional Advice
5. Freelance Writing Tip #31: Use Technology Wisely for Online Networking