Avoiding the "passive voice" .... really?

[HavinAThink]

When I write documents for work, Microsoft Word underlines, and tells me I should "consider revising", sentences that are in the passive voice (e.g. HR will be the first department to be provided with the new ID cards).

Normally I ignore it, but today I googled it, and it turns out many people (though possibly just in the US) have been told by their teachers and lecturers that good writing uses the active voice not the passive voice.

Surely that's bollocks? My DCs were taught the difference between the active and passive voice, but as far as I know they weren't told that one is superior to the other, and neither was I when I was at school.

I'm about to change my MS Word settings so I don't need to be bothered by it again. AIBU?

Thank you, Cariadlet, that's very helpful.

To use the smoking example, have I got these right:

Customers are not to smoke. Active, or is that still passive... still not sure.
No smoking. Active
It is forbidden to smoke. Passive

Oh dear, I'm clueless. (active) ?
Oh dear, I seem to be missing a crucial brain cell. (passive) ?

The gaps in my knowledge of grammar really bother me and recently I searched for an evening class that concentrated on grammar but couldn't find one. I want to know about all those other words I know I don't understand, like subjunctive clauses and goodness knows what else. I just know I don't know and I want to know. (Active!)

BitOutOfPractice

But I might want to make it obvious that the ejecting will be carried out by unnamed and nefarious forces!

Brilliant thread. I've learned something today. Thanks all (and the zombies!)

@Pengggwn I can be unnamed and nefarious . G'wan g'wan g'wan let me do it pleeeeeeeeeesase

BitOutOfPractice

Okay. But you have to really sling them out, no half measures!

Gusto. That's what I will use. Great gusto.

Thanks.

I'm cracking my knuckles in anticipation

Yep, that's write. I work in Communications and I'm forever having conversations with people about avoiding writing in the passive voice. A good tip is to read what you've written out loud and see how it sounds.

The most effective way to learn grammar distinctions like this is to take up a foreign language , using a very old fashioned textbook.

Professional writers know any kind of absolute (never use passive voice!) is bollocks. Passive voice is perfectly fine in some situations.

Most people don't even understand what passive voice is. The latest claim I saw (from an author) was that past progressive tense is passive voice and should be avoided.

I am grinding through an incident reporting process. I'm a witness rather than the reporter. The reports written so far take the passive voice to a horribly extreme level. This means it can be really hard to work out what's happened. I have grumpily pointed this out at every opportunity. I have to believe that it's at least partly deliberate - it's hard to place blame if nobody appears to have done anything.

The active voice is almost always better (English lit lecturer). Passive voice hedges and denies ownership of what it's saying. Think about the difference between 'apologies are offered' and 'I apologise'.

SeekEveryEveryKnownHidingPlace

That doesn't make it 'better', just more direct. If your purpose is to be less direct, passive voice is better.

But why would your purpose be to be indirect?

SeekEveryEveryKnownHidingPlace

Because there is a time for everything, and a purpose for everything that exists under heaven?

Why the heck not?

Well i suppose so. But it's hard to see why that would ever add to clarity and precision.

SeekEveryEveryKnownHidingPlace

Those aren't the aims of every piece of writing, though, are they?

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

What's Brooke meant to change the last line to?

I’m a company secretary and was trained to always use the passive voice in board minutes, as the issues and decisions are what matter, not the people involved. In fact avoid I attributing comments to any one director in particular as they are meant to act as a collective, not individually (unless one director disagrees with something and then I will record their name)

The active voice is not 'better'

I work in academia/STEM. Scientific journals articles and reports are always written in the passive voice. Active voice is not accepted.

It's important to understand the difference and know which is appropriate.

I teach English, mostly academic English, at a university and the passive voice definitely has its place. It really depends on what you want to convey or focus on in the sentence. Often the passive is used to change the subject.

E.g. HR will give out the passes next week.
Subject is HR

The passes will be given (by HR) next week.

The sentence is now about the passes.

It depends if the agent, HR, is important and yo be emphasised.

Following a corporate reorganisation, we have been instructed that our weekly status updates shall be written in the passive voice. It's brilliant, making it very easy to omit the 'who' was responsible for something, anything, not being done until it has been done.

I suspect they meant to ask for the third person, so the reports could be collated without significant rewrites, but what they asked for, was the passive voice so that is what they get. I was surprised by how many people struggled at first.

Absolutely agree with PP how learning a foreign language can help disentangle vocabulary and grammer

DailyMailReadersAreThick Thank goodness for that. I'm a writer of fiction when wearing my other (less pedantic and fretful) hat.

It still annoys me, all the grammar I don't know for certain.

Going back to an earlier example about the cat and the mouse.
The active one seems to be all about the mouse.
The passive one seems to be all about the cat being frightened, which to my mind is what the sentence is about, the cat's feelings.

So in that instance I would write a (probably passive, going by this thread) sentence that accurately described how the cat was feeling, ie frightened by the mouse.

Or have I got that wrong?

I ❤ the passive voice.

Now I'm wondering whether this says something about me, like, existentially. 😭

The active voice is not 'better'

Amen to that. I wish people would stop teaching rubbish.

DailyMailReadersAreThick Thank goodness for that. I'm a writer of fiction when wearing my other (less pedantic and fretful) hat.

I'm a professional non-fiction writer for a day job and a fiction writer in my spare time.

You've got it. Sometimes you want the focus to be on the subject. Sometimes you want the focus to be the thing that's being done. Neither is better or worse, right or wrong.

It's like the nonsense "show don't tell" that bad English teachers also preach without explanation. Do they have any idea how exhausting it would be to read a book entirely in show?? Tell where appropriate, show where appropriate. Use passive voice where appropriate and use active voice where appropriate.

/gets off soapbox