We see examples of this in police reports when the perpetrator is unknown. So when should you use the passive voice? Use it when you are trying to direct your reader’s attention away from the subject who performed the action and toward the action itself. In either case, the passive voice allows you to describe what you do know: Clara’s sandwich is no longer in the refrigerator because someone absconded with it. Perhaps you don’t want to reveal that you know who stole the sandwich, or maybe you don’t know who stole it. If active voice is stronger than passive voice, surely there is no time that passive voice is better, right? Wrong! The passive voice comes in handy when you don’t want to call attention to the subject, or when you’re not sure who or what the subject is.įor Example: Clara’s delicious sandwich was stolen. So when should you use active voice? If you are writing a paper for an English class, a cover letter for a job, or any document where you want to convey strength and authority on a subject, active voice will help you achieve your goals. Thus, active voice cuts through the clutter of passive voice.Įven in the previous example with the dolphin in the ghost lobster, we can see that the active voice sentence is shorter and has more energy than its passive counterpart. We are not bogged down in phrases like “could be heard.” We find, in fact, that we don’t even need this phrase, as we can infer that everyone in the vicinity could hear the crow. Notice how the active sentence is shorter and more to the point. Passive Voice : At dawn the crowing of the rooster could be heard.Īctive Voice: The rooster’s crow came with dawn. Why is this the case? Let’s look at an example from The Elements of Style for some clarity: Strunk and White state this as a rule instead of a mere guideline is that, generally speaking, active voice is stronger than passive voice. After all, in The Elements of Style by Strunk and White-arguably the most famous book about writing-the fourteenth rule is “Use the active voice” (34). While Active Voice is used in the first sentence, Passive Voice is used in the second sentence.For some people, the answer to this question is always. The subject in the first sentence is Benjamin, while the subject in the second sentence is Alice.

At first glance, you may not have understood what is different, what is different is the subjects. Although what is described in the two sentences is that Alice is waiting at the airport by Benjamin, the two sentences are told from completely different perspectives. When we take a look at these two sentence examples, we see that both sentences have a different sequence and meaning from each other. Let’s take a look at two different examples that we have given below:īenjamin greeted his friend Alice, whom he had not seen for years, at the airport.Īlice was greeted at the airport by her friend Benjamin, whom she had not met for years. It is impossible for us to tell you what the active voice is without telling you what the passive voice is. In the verb, which is one of the most important grammatical topics in English, the roof appears in two different forms as the active voice and the passive voice. What is the Difference Between Active Voice and Passive Voice?.

Whats active voice