Passive Voice: When to Avoid It and When to Use It

There are many seemingly arbitrary grammar rules that can make or break the readability of your writing. Avoiding passive voice, for instance, may seem unimportant, but it's a rule for a reason. Using an active, rather than passive, voice can go a long way to make your writing more professional and easier to understand.

Active vs. Passive Voice: What's The Difference?

Essentially, active voice means that the subject is performing the verb: “The mother picks up her crying baby.” Passive voice means that the subject is the recipient of the action: “The crying baby is picked up by her mother.” Although the second sentence is technically grammatically correct, the first is more succinct, making it clearer and stronger. Also, the first sentence follows our most common and logical sentence flow—subject, verb, object—while passive voice typically makes the object (in this example, the baby) the subject.

The "By the Monkeys" Rule: How to Distinguish Between Passive and Active Voice

In many cases, you should try to write in active voice. If you’re having trouble distinguishing whether a sentence is in active or passive voice, an easy trick is to shorten the sentence to only its subject and verb and then add “by the monkeys” at the end. If the sentence still makes sense, then it is in passive voice. If it doesn’t, then it is most likely in active voice.

For example, the sentence “The muffins were baked” is in passive voice, because we can add “by the monkeys” to make it “The muffins were baked by the monkeys.” We could change the sentence to make it active by clarifying, “I baked the muffins,” or “I added chocolate chips to the muffins I baked,” or “The muffins I baked tasted amazing.”

When Passive Voice is the Right Choice

There are some instances in which passive voice is the best or only option. For example, if you were writing The Princess and The Pea by Hans Christian Andersen, you might say “The princess was disturbed in her sleep.” (Again, try adding “by the monkeys” to the end of this sentence to check that it is indeed passive). The subject of a sentence is generally the focal point from which the rest of a sentence flows. So, if we want to focus on the princess while also concealing what exactly is disturbing her sleep, writing this sentence in passive voice is the best option.

In the legal profession, phrases like "the case was dismissed" or "the charges were dropped" make the most sense in passive voice. If the phrases were changed to "the judge dismissed the case" or "the prosecutor dropped the charges," they become clunky and unnecessarily complex. The context is already there, and it does not need to be further elaborated upon. "The case was dismissed" works perfectly well, even if it's in passive voice.

Passive vs Active Voice: It All Comes Down to Context

You should use active voice whenever possible to make your writing stronger and clearer, except in situations where passive voice is the better option. Use your best judgment and remember the monkey rule whenever you’re questioning whether a sentence is in active or passive voice!