Passive Voice: When to Use It and When to Avoid It
A balanced guide to the passive voice: how to recognize it, when it serves your writing, when it weakens it, and how to edit with intention.
The exact change
"Telling writers to avoid the passive voice is like telling painters to avoid blue. There is no rule. There is only what works for each sentence. The good writer chooses. The mediocre writer follows a rule." Steven Pinker, The Sense of Style [...] "The passive voice is often the friend of the writer who has something to hide. If your draft is full of passives in sentences where the agent matters, ask whether you are dodging a claim you should be making." Bryan Garner, Garner's Modern English Usage [...] "The old advice that scientific writing must be impersonal is not a grammar rule. It is a convention that is fading. Active voice is clearer, shorter, and more honest about who did what. Most scientific writing is better in active voice." Helen Sword, Stylish Academic Writing
In The Sense of Style, Steven Pinker argues that the blanket advice to avoid the passive voice is bad advice: the passive has genuine, indispensable functions, and skilled writers should feel free to use it deliberately rather than following a rule mechanically. [...] Usage guides such as Bryan Garner's Garner's Modern English Usage caution that overuse of the passive voice can let a writer avoid naming who is responsible for an action, and recommend checking every passive construction where the agent genuinely matters. [...] In Stylish Academic Writing, Helen Sword challenges the assumption that academic and scientific prose must stay impersonal, noting that most scientists have moved away from the impersonal passive mode and that no major style guide actually forbids first-person, active writing.
Why this is better
Unverified quote attributed to Steven Pinker. This exact quote (including the 'painters to avoid blue' metaphor) could not be verified in The Sense of Style or any other indexed source, though Pinker has ge; unverified quote attributed to Bryan Garner. This exact quote could not be verified in Garner's Modern English Usage or any other indexed source.; unverified quote attributed to Helen Sword. This exact quote could not be verified in Stylish Academic Writing or any other indexed source.
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