When You Should Use Passive Voice

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We've all heard about the dreaded passive voice in fiction and to avoid it at all costs. However, many folks don't know what it actually is or don't recognize it when they see it.

In a sentence written in active voice, the subject of the sentence does the verb.

Active Voice: I sat on the chair.

In a sentence written in the passive voice, the subject of the sentence does not perform the action of the verb.

Passive Voice: The chair was sat on. (Who did the sitting?)

Active voice is always more vibrant and creates images. Passive only gets the point across in a static, unmoving manner. Whenever you can, write with active voice.

However, there are times when passive voice is preferable. These are few and far between. One instance is when one is writing a scientific paper. While most people won't ever have to do this, the illustration is relevant to fiction. In a scientific paper, the person who did the experiment isn't important. The experiment itself and the result is the point of the paper. Thus, you get sentences like this:

The region of IE63 required for interaction with IE62 was identified using protein affinity pulldown assays. (It doesn't matter who ran the pulldown assays. It matters that the region was identified in this manner.)

One could rewrite the second sentence to be more active thusly:

Affinity pulldown assays identified the region of IE63 required for interaction with IE62.

However, this is actually less clear to a scientist because the subject of the sentence is "affinity pulldown assays," which is merely a method. The scientific paper is about the results, and therefore, the most important part of the sentence should be the subject of the sentence and not, in this case, merely a direct object and a couple of prepositional phrases.

You should put the most important thing in the sentence as its subject. Most of the time, you will then have a subject performing the action of the verb and thus an active-voice sentence. Occasionally, however, the most important thing in the sentence does not perform the action of the verb. In that case, use the passive voice.

Bob had the distinct impression that he would not spend the evening alone. His fears were realized twenty minutes later when three drunken women sat down at his table and demanded he buy them drinks.

In this case, we wanted to highlight Bob's fears, which took the form of three drunken women. Since the women are the realization of his fears, this is actually a passive-voice sentence.