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Query:

Response:

Calculated Shard: 35 (from laksa040)

2. Crawled Status Check

Query:

curl -X POST \
  'http://laksa035.int.ahrefs:8124/' \
  -H 'Content-Type: text/plain' \
  -H 'X-ClickHouse-Database: crawler3' \
  -H 'Authorization: Basic YXBpOg==' \
  -d 'SELECT getAhrefsURLFromUnparsed(src_unparsed) AS found_url, ifNull(toUnixTimestamp(download_stamp), 0) AS crawl_time, ifNull(toUnixTimestamp(props_url_first_seen), 0) AS first_indexed_time, download_http_code AS http_code, src_unparsed AS src_unparsed, src_root_hash AS src_root_hash, history_drop_reason AS history_drop_reason, meta_title AS meta_title, meta_descriptions AS meta_descriptions, attrs_boilerpipe_text AS attrs_boilerpipe_text, attrs_markdown AS attrs_markdown, attrs_readable_markdown AS attrs_readable_markdown, meta_canonical AS meta_canonical FROM crawler3.page_info_local FINAL PREWHERE (src_root_hash, src_unparsed) IN ((getAhrefsRootHashFromUnparsed(getAhrefsUnparsedNoserviceFromURL(\'https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/articles/active-voice-versus-passive-voice/\')), getAhrefsUnparsedNoserviceFromURL(\'https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/articles/active-voice-versus-passive-voice/\'))) FORMAT JSONEachRow'

Response:

{"found_url":"https:\/\/www.quickanddirtytips.com\/articles\/active-voice-versus-passive-voice\/","crawl_time":1772141246,"first_indexed_time":1658936981,"http_code":200,"src_unparsed":"com,quickanddirtytips!www,\/articles\/active-voice-versus-passive-voice\/ s443","src_root_hash":"7618980102624921635","history_drop_reason":null,"meta_title":"Active Voice Versus Passive Voice","meta_descriptions":["A lot of you have asked the Grammar Girl podcast to explain passive voice and how to avoid it. Here's what you need to know."],"attrs_boilerpipe_text":"Today’s topic is active voice versus passive voice.\nHere’s a question from Brian in Iowa. He writes, “It drives me crazy when people write in passive voice. How can I teach people how to tell the difference between passive and active voice and to stay away from passive voice?”\nWell, Brian is right, the first step is to help people understand the difference between active and passive voice, because many people believe they should avoid the passive voice, but fewer people can define it or recognize it.\nWhat Is Active Voice?\nI’ll start with active voice because it’s simpler. In an active sentence, the subject is doing the action. A straightforward example is the sentence “Steve loves Amy.” Steve is the subject, and he is doing the action: he loves Amy, the object of the sentence.\nAnother example is the title of the Marvin Gaye song “I Heard It through the Grapevine.” “I” is the subject, the one who is doing the action. “I” is hearing “it,” the object of the sentence.\nWhat Is Passive Voice?\nIn passive voice, the target of the action gets promoted to the subject position. Instead of saying, “Steve loves Amy,” I would say, “Amy is loved by Steve.” The subject of the sentence becomes Amy, but she isn’t doing anything. Rather, she is just the recipient of Steve’s love. The focus of the sentence has changed from Steve to Amy.\nIf you wanted to make the title of the Marvin Gaye song passive, you would say “It was heard by me through the grapevine,” not such a catchy title anymore.\nIs “To Be” a Sign of a Passive Sentence?\nA lot of people think all sentences that contain a form of the verb “to be” are in passive voice, but that isn’t true. For example, the sentence “I am holding a pen” is in active voice, but it uses the verb “am,” which is a form of “to be.” The passive form of that sentence is “The pen is being held by me.”\nNotice that the subject, the pen, isn’t doing anything in that sentence. It’s not taking an action; it’s passive. One clue that your sentence is passive is that the subject isn’t taking a direct action.\nIs Passive Voice Always Wrong?\nPassive voice isn’t wrong, but it’s often a poor way to present your thoughts.\nAnother important point is that passive sentences aren’t incorrect; it’s just that they often aren’t the best way to phrase your thoughts. Sometimes passive voice is awkward and other times it’s vague. Also, passive voice is usually wordy, so you can tighten your writing if you replace passive sentences with active sentence.\nWhen you put sentences in passive voice, it’s easy to leave out the person or thing doing the action. For example, “Amy is loved,” is passive. The problem with that sentence is that you don’t know who loves Amy.\nPoliticians often use passive voice to intentionally obscure the idea of who is taking the action. Ronald Reagan famously said, “Mistakes were made,” when referring to the Iran-Contra scandal. Other examples of passive voice for political reasons could include “Bombs were dropped,” and “Shots were fired.” Pay attention to the news and listen for examples of passive voice.\nAlso, a reader named Matthew commented that businesses sometimes use passive voice. He notes that it sounds better to write, “Your electricity will be shut off,” than “We, the electric company, will be shutting off your power.”\nIs Passive Voice Hard to Understand?\nA recent study\n suggests that less educated people–those who dropped out of school when they were 16–have a harder time understanding sentences written in the passive voice than those written in active voice. I only had access to the press release, not the original study, but the results made it seem as if you should stick with active voice if you’re writing for the general population.\nNow let’s talk about some common scenarios where passive voice \ndoes \nhelp and why.\nIn crime reports\nIn fiction writing\nIn scientific writing\nUse Passive Voice When the Subject is Unknown\nOn the other hand, sometimes passive voice does have advantages. For example, if you truly don’t know who is taking the action, then you can’t name the person. This is especially common with crime reports. For example, a security guard might write “The store was robbed,” because nobody knows who the robber was.\nUse Passive Voice in Fiction to Emphasize Specific Details\nPassive voice is also sometimes useful in\nfiction writing\n. For example, if you were writing a mystery novel and you wanted to highlight missing cookies because they are central to the story, passive voice is the best option. It would make more sense to write, “The cookies were stolen,” instead of “Somebody stole the cookies.”\nThe difference is subtle, but in the passive sentence “The cookies were stolen,” the focus is on the cookies. In “Somebody stole the cookies,” the focus would be on the unknown somebody.\nPassive voice can be helpful if you want to create a sense of mystery in your sentence, which is also a reason that it’s not usually a good choice when you’re writing nonfiction and you\nwant your writing to be clear\n.\nUse Passive Voice in Scientific Writing to Create Objectivity\nAn exception is that scientists are often encouraged to write in passive voice to lend their writing a sense of objectivity–to take themselves and their actions and opinions out of the experimental results. I used to be a scientist and I always found that odd. It felt as if we were trying to hide that real people did the experiments.\nSome scientific\nstyle guides\ndo allow for a limited use of active voice (1). For example, it may be OK to write, “We sequenced the DNA,” instead of “The DNA was sequenced,” but it’s still considered bad for scientists to insert themselves into conclusions. For example, it would be bad scientific form to write “We believe the mutation causes cancer.” But you still don’t need passive voice to achieve your goals. For example, the active sentence “We believe the mutation causes cancer,” could be changed to “The data suggests that the mutation causes cancer.” That’s still active, but it eliminates the sense of subjectivity.\nDid Strunk & White Get Passive Voice Wrong?\nFinally, I have to include a note about\nStrunk & White’s\ntreatment of passive voice. In their classic book,\nThe Elements of Style\n, three of their four examples of passive voice aren’t actually passive voice sentences. I’ve included two links below that explain the problems, but if you rely on\nThe Elements of Style\n, as so many people do, be aware that this is a problem with that book.\n50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice\n(The Chronicle of Higher Education)\nEnglish Passive Voice\n(Wikipedia)\nWeb Bonus: Watson & Crick\nWatson and Crick’s famous paper\nabout the discovery of the structure of DNA, written in 1953, contains both active and passive sentences;\nWe wish to suggest a structure for the salt of deoxyribose nucleic acid (D.N.A.). (active)\nWe have made the usual chemical assumptions, namely, that each chain consists of phosphate diester groups joining beta-D-deoxyribofuranose residues with 3′,5′ linkages. (active)\nIf it is assumed that the bases only occur in the structure in the most plausible tautomeric forms (that is, with the keto rather than the enol configurations) it is found that only specific pairs of bases can bond together. (passive)\nIt has been found experimentally that the ratio of the amounts of adenine to thymine, and the ratio of guanine to cytosine, are always very close to unity for deoxyribose nucleic acid. (passive)\nReferences\n1. “Writing in the Sciences,” The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,\nVisit to the https:\/\/www.unc.edu\/depts\/wcweb\/handouts\/sciences.html\n(accessed July 23, 2010)\nPencil and note paper\nfrom Pixabay","attrs_markdown":"[Skip to main content](https:\/\/www.quickanddirtytips.com\/articles\/active-voice-versus-passive-voice\/skipcusmain)\n\n[Close Menu](https:\/\/www.quickanddirtytips.com\/articles\/active-voice-versus-passive-voice\/)\n\n![Quick and Dirty Tips](https:\/\/www.quickanddirtytips.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/logo.webp)\n\n- [Podcasts](https:\/\/www.quickanddirtytips.com\/podcasts)\n  - [Grammar Girl](https:\/\/www.quickanddirtytips.com\/grammar-girl\/)\n  - [Get-Fit Guy](https:\/\/www.quickanddirtytips.com\/get-fit-guy\/)\n  - [Money Girl](https:\/\/www.quickanddirtytips.com\/money-girl\/)\n  - [Project Parenthood](https:\/\/www.quickanddirtytips.com\/project-parenthood\/)\n  - [Relationship 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QDT](https:\/\/www.quickanddirtytips.com\/about-quick-and-dirty-tips\/)\n\n[Facebook](https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/quickdirtytips)   [X (Twitter)](https:\/\/twitter.com\/quickdirtytips)   [Instagram](https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/quickdirtytips\/)   [Pinterest](https:\/\/www.quickanddirtytips.com\/newsletters\/)\n\n[![Quick and Dirty Tips](https:\/\/www.quickanddirtytips.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/logo.webp)](https:\/\/www.quickanddirtytips.com\/ \"Quick and Dirty Tips\")\n\nYou are at:[Home](https:\/\/www.quickanddirtytips.com\/) » Active Voice Versus Passive Voice\n\n[Grammar Girl](https:\/\/www.quickanddirtytips.com\/?p=44478 \"Grammar Girl\")\n\n# Active Voice Versus Passive Voice\nA lot of you have asked me to explain passive voice and how to avoid it.\n\nBy [Mignon Fogarty](https:\/\/www.quickanddirtytips.com\/author\/mignonfogarty\/ \"Posts by Mignon Fogarty\")\n\nJuly 22, 2010\n\n[No 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WDLg061evX](https:\/\/www.quickanddirtytips.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/US_ListenOn_AmazonMusic_Button_US_White.png)](https:\/\/music.amazon.com\/podcasts\/0e228389-7170-4410-b77e-814da4f7e7f0\/grammar-girl-quick-and-dirty-tips-for-better-writing)\n\n[![a green pencil](https:\/\/www.quickanddirtytips.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/Untitled-design-1-768x401.png)](https:\/\/www.quickanddirtytips.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/Untitled-design-1.png \"Active Voice Versus Passive Voice\")\n\nShare\n\n[Facebook](https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.quickanddirtytips.com%2Farticles%2Factive-voice-versus-passive-voice%2F \"Facebook\")   [Twitter](https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.quickanddirtytips.com%2Farticles%2Factive-voice-versus-passive-voice%2F&text=Active%20Voice%20Versus%20Passive%20Voice \"Twitter\")   [Pinterest](https:\/\/pinterest.com\/pin\/create\/button\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.quickanddirtytips.com%2Farticles%2Factive-voice-versus-passive-voice%2F&media=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.quickanddirtytips.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2010%2F07%2FUntitled-design-1.png&description=Active%20Voice%20Versus%20Passive%20Voice \"Pinterest\")   [WhatsApp](https:\/\/wa.me\/?text=Active%20Voice%20Versus%20Passive%20Voice%20https%3A%2F%2Fwww.quickanddirtytips.com%2Farticles%2Factive-voice-versus-passive-voice%2F \"WhatsApp\")   [Email](mailto:?subject=Active%20Voice%20Versus%20Passive%20Voice&body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.quickanddirtytips.com%2Farticles%2Factive-voice-versus-passive-voice%2F \"Email\")\n\nToday’s topic is active voice versus passive voice.\n\nHere’s a question from Brian in Iowa. He writes, “It drives me crazy when people write in passive voice. How can I teach people how to tell the difference between passive and active voice and to stay away from passive voice?”\n\nWell, Brian is right, the first step is to help people understand the difference between active and passive voice, because many people believe they should avoid the passive voice, but fewer people can define it or recognize it.\n\n## What Is Active Voice?\nI’ll start with active voice because it’s simpler. In an active sentence, the subject is doing the action. A straightforward example is the sentence “Steve loves Amy.” Steve is the subject, and he is doing the action: he loves Amy, the object of the sentence.\n\nAnother example is the title of the Marvin Gaye song “I Heard It through the Grapevine.” “I” is the subject, the one who is doing the action. “I” is hearing “it,” the object of the sentence.\n\n## What Is Passive Voice?\nIn passive voice, the target of the action gets promoted to the subject position. Instead of saying, “Steve loves Amy,” I would say, “Amy is loved by Steve.” The subject of the sentence becomes Amy, but she isn’t doing anything. Rather, she is just the recipient of Steve’s love. The focus of the sentence has changed from Steve to Amy.\n\nIf you wanted to make the title of the Marvin Gaye song passive, you would say “It was heard by me through the grapevine,” not such a catchy title anymore.\n\n## Is “To Be” a Sign of a Passive Sentence?\nA lot of people think all sentences that contain a form of the verb “to be” are in passive voice, but that isn’t true. For example, the sentence “I am holding a pen” is in active voice, but it uses the verb “am,” which is a form of “to be.” The passive form of that sentence is “The pen is being held by me.”\n\nNotice that the subject, the pen, isn’t doing anything in that sentence. It’s not taking an action; it’s passive. One clue that your sentence is passive is that the subject isn’t taking a direct action.\n\n## Is Passive Voice Always Wrong?\nPassive voice isn’t wrong, but it’s often a poor way to present your thoughts.\n\nAnother important point is that passive sentences aren’t incorrect; it’s just that they often aren’t the best way to phrase your thoughts. Sometimes passive voice is awkward and other times it’s vague. Also, passive voice is usually wordy, so you can tighten your writing if you replace passive sentences with active sentence.\n\nWhen you put sentences in passive voice, it’s easy to leave out the person or thing doing the action. For example, “Amy is loved,” is passive. The problem with that sentence is that you don’t know who loves Amy.\n\nPoliticians often use passive voice to intentionally obscure the idea of who is taking the action. Ronald Reagan famously said, “Mistakes were made,” when referring to the Iran-Contra scandal. Other examples of passive voice for political reasons could include “Bombs were dropped,” and “Shots were fired.” Pay attention to the news and listen for examples of passive voice.\n\nAlso, a reader named Matthew commented that businesses sometimes use passive voice. He notes that it sounds better to write, “Your electricity will be shut off,” than “We, the electric company, will be shutting off your power.”\n\n## Is Passive Voice Hard to Understand?\n[A recent study](https:\/\/www.sciencedaily.com\/releases\/2010\/07\/100706082156.htm) suggests that less educated people–those who dropped out of school when they were 16–have a harder time understanding sentences written in the passive voice than those written in active voice. I only had access to the press release, not the original study, but the results made it seem as if you should stick with active voice if you’re writing for the general population.\n\nNow let’s talk about some common scenarios where passive voice *does* help and why.\n\n1. In crime reports\n2. In fiction writing\n3. In scientific writing\n## Use Passive Voice When the Subject is Unknown\nOn the other hand, sometimes passive voice does have advantages. For example, if you truly don’t know who is taking the action, then you can’t name the person. This is especially common with crime reports. For example, a security guard might write “The store was robbed,” because nobody knows who the robber was.\n\n## Use Passive Voice in Fiction to Emphasize Specific Details\nPassive voice is also sometimes useful in [fiction writing](https:\/\/www.quickanddirtytips.com\/education\/grammar\/how-to-write-your-first-novel). For example, if you were writing a mystery novel and you wanted to highlight missing cookies because they are central to the story, passive voice is the best option. It would make more sense to write, “The cookies were stolen,” instead of “Somebody stole the cookies.”\n\nThe difference is subtle, but in the passive sentence “The cookies were stolen,” the focus is on the cookies. In “Somebody stole the cookies,” the focus would be on the unknown somebody.\n\nPassive voice can be helpful if you want to create a sense of mystery in your sentence, which is also a reason that it’s not usually a good choice when you’re writing nonfiction and you [want your writing to be clear](https:\/\/www.quickanddirtytips.com\/education\/grammar\/how-to-write-clear-sentences).\n\n## Use Passive Voice in Scientific Writing to Create Objectivity\nAn exception is that scientists are often encouraged to write in passive voice to lend their writing a sense of objectivity–to take themselves and their actions and opinions out of the experimental results. I used to be a scientist and I always found that odd. It felt as if we were trying to hide that real people did the experiments.\n\nSome scientific [style guides](https:\/\/www.quickanddirtytips.com\/education\/grammar\/why-would-anyone-use-the-chicago-manual-of-style) do allow for a limited use of active voice (1). For example, it may be OK to write, “We sequenced the DNA,” instead of “The DNA was sequenced,” but it’s still considered bad for scientists to insert themselves into conclusions. For example, it would be bad scientific form to write “We believe the mutation causes cancer.” But you still don’t need passive voice to achieve your goals. For example, the active sentence “We believe the mutation causes cancer,” could be changed to “The data suggests that the mutation causes cancer.” That’s still active, but it eliminates the sense of subjectivity.\n\n## Did Strunk & White Get Passive Voice Wrong?\nFinally, I have to include a note about [Strunk & White’s](https:\/\/www.quickanddirtytips.com\/education\/grammar\/strunk-and-white) treatment of passive voice. In their classic book, *The Elements of Style*, three of their four examples of passive voice aren’t actually passive voice sentences. I’ve included two links below that explain the problems, but if you rely on *The Elements of Style*, as so many people do, be aware that this is a problem with that book.\n\n[50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice](https:\/\/chronicle.com\/article\/50-Years-of-Stupid-Grammar\/25497) (The Chronicle of Higher Education)  \n [English Passive Voice](https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/English_passive_voice#Misapplication_of_the_term) (Wikipedia)\n\npowered by [Typeform](https:\/\/admin.typeform.com\/signup?utm_campaign=WzTkku&utm_source=typeform.com-01E4C840PR51P318AJHS7FNC1B-professional&utm_medium=typeform&utm_content=typeform-embedded-poweredbytypeform&utm_term=EN)\n\n## Web Bonus: Watson & Crick\n[Watson and Crick’s famous paper](https:\/\/www.exploratorium.edu\/origins\/coldspring\/printit.html) about the discovery of the structure of DNA, written in 1953, contains both active and passive sentences;\n\nWe wish to suggest a structure for the salt of deoxyribose nucleic acid (D.N.A.). (active)\n\nWe have made the usual chemical assumptions, namely, that each chain consists of phosphate diester groups joining beta-D-deoxyribofuranose residues with 3′,5′ linkages. (active)\n\nIf it is assumed that the bases only occur in the structure in the most plausible tautomeric forms (that is, with the keto rather than the enol configurations) it is found that only specific pairs of bases can bond together. (passive)\n\nIt has been found experimentally that the ratio of the amounts of adenine to thymine, and the ratio of guanine to cytosine, are always very close to unity for deoxyribose nucleic acid. (passive)\n\n**References**\n\n- 1\\. “Writing in the Sciences,” The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, [Visit to the https:\/\/www.unc.edu\/depts\/wcweb\/handouts\/sciences.html](https:\/\/www.unc.edu\/depts\/wcweb\/handouts\/sciences.html \"Click on sciences page\") (accessed July 23, 2010)\n\n*[Pencil and note paper](https:\/\/pixabay.com\/en\/pencil-note-paper-writing-drawing-2269\/) from Pixabay*\n\n[Mignon Fogarty](https:\/\/www.quickanddirtytips.com\/author\/mignonfogarty\/ \"Posts by Mignon Fogarty\")\n\n- [Facebook](https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/GrammarGirl\/ \"Facebook\")\n- [Instagram](https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/thegrammargirl\/ \"Instagram\")\n- [LinkedIn](https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/company\/grammar-girl \"LinkedIn\")\n\nMignon Fogarty is the founder of Quick and Dirty Tips and the author of seven books on language, including the New York Times bestseller \"[Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing](https:\/\/amzn.to\/2KcTqWX).\" She is an inductee in the Podcasting Hall of Fame, and the show is a five-time winner of Best Education Podcast in the Podcast Awards. She has appeared as a guest expert on the Oprah Winfrey Show and the Today Show. Her popular [LinkedIn Learning courses](https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/learning\/instructors\/mignon-fogarty) help people write better to communicate better. Find her on [Mastodon](https:\/\/zirk.us\/@grammargirl).\n\n[Add A Comment](https:\/\/www.quickanddirtytips.com\/articles\/active-voice-versus-passive-voice\/)\n\nComments are closed.\n\n##### Don't Miss\n## [Was Parson Brown from ‘Winter Wonderland’ a Real Person?](https:\/\/www.quickanddirtytips.com\/articles\/was-parson-brown-from-winter-wonderland-a-real-person\/)\nBy [Ashley Dodge](https:\/\/www.quickanddirtytips.com\/author\/ashleydodge\/ \"Posts by Ashley Dodge\")\n\nDecember 7, 2025\n\nWhen \"Winter Wonderland\" was written in the 1930s, \"parson\" was a term for Protestant or Anglican ministers. They would often travel from town to town performing wedding ceremonies for those who did not have a local minister of their own faith. \"Parson Brown\" doesn’t seem to refer to any significant historical figure from the time period and is more likely a fictional name.\n\n#### [The Grammar Trick Every Ad Is Using](https:\/\/www.quickanddirtytips.com\/articles\/the-grammar-trick-every-ad-is-using\/)\nDecember 2, 2025\n\n#### [The Quick and Dirty Guide to DSCR Loans for Property Buyers](https:\/\/www.quickanddirtytips.com\/articles\/the-quick-and-dirty-guide-to-dscr-loans-for-property-buyers\/)\nOctober 30, 2025\n\n#### [Double Possessives](https:\/\/www.quickanddirtytips.com\/articles\/double-possessives\/)\nAugust 12, 2025\n\n##### Stay In Touch\n- [Facebook 12K](https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/quickdirtytips)\n- [Twitter 25.7K](https:\/\/twitter.com\/quickdirtytips)\n- [Pinterest 18.5K](https:\/\/pinterest.com\/quickdirtytips)\n- [Instagram 123K](https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/quickdirtytips\/)\n- [YouTube 23K](https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/@quickanddirtytips)\n\n##### Our Picks\n## [Was Parson Brown from ‘Winter Wonderland’ a Real Person?](https:\/\/www.quickanddirtytips.com\/articles\/was-parson-brown-from-winter-wonderland-a-real-person\/)\nBy [Ashley Dodge](https:\/\/www.quickanddirtytips.com\/author\/ashleydodge\/ \"Posts by Ashley Dodge\")\n\nDecember 7, 2025\n\n## [The Grammar Trick Every Ad Is Using](https:\/\/www.quickanddirtytips.com\/articles\/the-grammar-trick-every-ad-is-using\/)\nBy [Ben Yagoda, Writing for Grammar Girl](https:\/\/www.quickanddirtytips.com\/author\/benyagoda\/ \"Posts by Ben Yagoda, Writing for Grammar Girl\")\n\nDecember 2, 2025\n\n## [The Quick and Dirty Guide to DSCR Loans for Property Buyers](https:\/\/www.quickanddirtytips.com\/articles\/the-quick-and-dirty-guide-to-dscr-loans-for-property-buyers\/)\nBy [John Ibrahim, Contributor](https:\/\/www.quickanddirtytips.com\/author\/john-ibrahim\/ \"Posts by John Ibrahim, Contributor\")\n\nOctober 30, 2025\n\n## Subscribe\n[![Mignon Fogarty for Apple Podcast Page](https:\/\/www.quickanddirtytips.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Apple-Podcasts.png)](https:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/grammar-girl-quick-dirty-tips\/id173429229?mt=2 \"Apple Podcast - 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Quick & Dirty Tips™ and related trademarks appearing on this website are the property of Mignon Fogarty, Inc. and Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.\n\n![](https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/tr?id=423990969915940&ev=PageView&noscript=1)\n\n![](https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/tr?id=730708998863798&ev=PageView&noscript=1)\n\n![.](https:\/\/ams-pageview-public.s3.amazonaws.com\/1x1-pixel.png?id=b2a186f2c46f)","attrs_readable_markdown":"Today’s topic is active voice versus passive voice.\n\nHere’s a question from Brian in Iowa. He writes, “It drives me crazy when people write in passive voice. How can I teach people how to tell the difference between passive and active voice and to stay away from passive voice?”\n\nWell, Brian is right, the first step is to help people understand the difference between active and passive voice, because many people believe they should avoid the passive voice, but fewer people can define it or recognize it.\n\n## What Is Active Voice?\nI’ll start with active voice because it’s simpler. In an active sentence, the subject is doing the action. A straightforward example is the sentence “Steve loves Amy.” Steve is the subject, and he is doing the action: he loves Amy, the object of the sentence.\n\nAnother example is the title of the Marvin Gaye song “I Heard It through the Grapevine.” “I” is the subject, the one who is doing the action. “I” is hearing “it,” the object of the sentence.\n\n## What Is Passive Voice?\nIn passive voice, the target of the action gets promoted to the subject position. Instead of saying, “Steve loves Amy,” I would say, “Amy is loved by Steve.” The subject of the sentence becomes Amy, but she isn’t doing anything. Rather, she is just the recipient of Steve’s love. The focus of the sentence has changed from Steve to Amy.\n\nIf you wanted to make the title of the Marvin Gaye song passive, you would say “It was heard by me through the grapevine,” not such a catchy title anymore.\n\n## Is “To Be” a Sign of a Passive Sentence?\nA lot of people think all sentences that contain a form of the verb “to be” are in passive voice, but that isn’t true. For example, the sentence “I am holding a pen” is in active voice, but it uses the verb “am,” which is a form of “to be.” The passive form of that sentence is “The pen is being held by me.”\n\nNotice that the subject, the pen, isn’t doing anything in that sentence. It’s not taking an action; it’s passive. One clue that your sentence is passive is that the subject isn’t taking a direct action.\n\n## Is Passive Voice Always Wrong?\nPassive voice isn’t wrong, but it’s often a poor way to present your thoughts.\n\nAnother important point is that passive sentences aren’t incorrect; it’s just that they often aren’t the best way to phrase your thoughts. Sometimes passive voice is awkward and other times it’s vague. Also, passive voice is usually wordy, so you can tighten your writing if you replace passive sentences with active sentence.\n\nWhen you put sentences in passive voice, it’s easy to leave out the person or thing doing the action. For example, “Amy is loved,” is passive. The problem with that sentence is that you don’t know who loves Amy.\n\nPoliticians often use passive voice to intentionally obscure the idea of who is taking the action. Ronald Reagan famously said, “Mistakes were made,” when referring to the Iran-Contra scandal. Other examples of passive voice for political reasons could include “Bombs were dropped,” and “Shots were fired.” Pay attention to the news and listen for examples of passive voice.\n\nAlso, a reader named Matthew commented that businesses sometimes use passive voice. He notes that it sounds better to write, “Your electricity will be shut off,” than “We, the electric company, will be shutting off your power.”\n\n## Is Passive Voice Hard to Understand?\n[A recent study](https:\/\/www.sciencedaily.com\/releases\/2010\/07\/100706082156.htm) suggests that less educated people–those who dropped out of school when they were 16–have a harder time understanding sentences written in the passive voice than those written in active voice. I only had access to the press release, not the original study, but the results made it seem as if you should stick with active voice if you’re writing for the general population.\n\nNow let’s talk about some common scenarios where passive voice *does* help and why.\n\n1. In crime reports\n2. In fiction writing\n3. In scientific writing\n## Use Passive Voice When the Subject is Unknown\nOn the other hand, sometimes passive voice does have advantages. For example, if you truly don’t know who is taking the action, then you can’t name the person. This is especially common with crime reports. For example, a security guard might write “The store was robbed,” because nobody knows who the robber was.\n\n## Use Passive Voice in Fiction to Emphasize Specific Details\nPassive voice is also sometimes useful in [fiction writing](https:\/\/www.quickanddirtytips.com\/education\/grammar\/how-to-write-your-first-novel). For example, if you were writing a mystery novel and you wanted to highlight missing cookies because they are central to the story, passive voice is the best option. It would make more sense to write, “The cookies were stolen,” instead of “Somebody stole the cookies.”\n\nThe difference is subtle, but in the passive sentence “The cookies were stolen,” the focus is on the cookies. In “Somebody stole the cookies,” the focus would be on the unknown somebody.\n\nPassive voice can be helpful if you want to create a sense of mystery in your sentence, which is also a reason that it’s not usually a good choice when you’re writing nonfiction and you [want your writing to be clear](https:\/\/www.quickanddirtytips.com\/education\/grammar\/how-to-write-clear-sentences).\n\n## Use Passive Voice in Scientific Writing to Create Objectivity\nAn exception is that scientists are often encouraged to write in passive voice to lend their writing a sense of objectivity–to take themselves and their actions and opinions out of the experimental results. I used to be a scientist and I always found that odd. It felt as if we were trying to hide that real people did the experiments.\n\nSome scientific [style guides](https:\/\/www.quickanddirtytips.com\/education\/grammar\/why-would-anyone-use-the-chicago-manual-of-style) do allow for a limited use of active voice (1). For example, it may be OK to write, “We sequenced the DNA,” instead of “The DNA was sequenced,” but it’s still considered bad for scientists to insert themselves into conclusions. For example, it would be bad scientific form to write “We believe the mutation causes cancer.” But you still don’t need passive voice to achieve your goals. For example, the active sentence “We believe the mutation causes cancer,” could be changed to “The data suggests that the mutation causes cancer.” That’s still active, but it eliminates the sense of subjectivity.\n\n## Did Strunk & White Get Passive Voice Wrong?\nFinally, I have to include a note about [Strunk & White’s](https:\/\/www.quickanddirtytips.com\/education\/grammar\/strunk-and-white) treatment of passive voice. In their classic book, *The Elements of Style*, three of their four examples of passive voice aren’t actually passive voice sentences. I’ve included two links below that explain the problems, but if you rely on *The Elements of Style*, as so many people do, be aware that this is a problem with that book.\n\n[50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice](https:\/\/chronicle.com\/article\/50-Years-of-Stupid-Grammar\/25497) (The Chronicle of Higher Education)  \n [English Passive Voice](https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/English_passive_voice#Misapplication_of_the_term) (Wikipedia)\n\n## Web Bonus: Watson & Crick\n[Watson and Crick’s famous paper](https:\/\/www.exploratorium.edu\/origins\/coldspring\/printit.html) about the discovery of the structure of DNA, written in 1953, contains both active and passive sentences;\n\nWe wish to suggest a structure for the salt of deoxyribose nucleic acid (D.N.A.). (active)\n\nWe have made the usual chemical assumptions, namely, that each chain consists of phosphate diester groups joining beta-D-deoxyribofuranose residues with 3′,5′ linkages. (active)\n\nIf it is assumed that the bases only occur in the structure in the most plausible tautomeric forms (that is, with the keto rather than the enol configurations) it is found that only specific pairs of bases can bond together. (passive)\n\nIt has been found experimentally that the ratio of the amounts of adenine to thymine, and the ratio of guanine to cytosine, are always very close to unity for deoxyribose nucleic acid. (passive)\n\n**References**\n\n- 1\\. “Writing in the Sciences,” The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, [Visit to the https:\/\/www.unc.edu\/depts\/wcweb\/handouts\/sciences.html](https:\/\/www.unc.edu\/depts\/wcweb\/handouts\/sciences.html \"Click on sciences page\") (accessed July 23, 2010)\n\n*[Pencil and note paper](https:\/\/pixabay.com\/en\/pencil-note-paper-writing-drawing-2269\/) from Pixabay*","meta_canonical":null}

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Boilerpipe Text	Today’s topic is active voice versus passive voice. Here’s a question from Brian in Iowa. He writes, “It drives me crazy when people write in passive voice. How can I teach people how to tell the difference between passive and active voice and to stay away from passive voice?” Well, Brian is right, the first step is to help people understand the difference between active and passive voice, because many people believe they should avoid the passive voice, but fewer people can define it or recognize it. What Is Active Voice? I’ll start with active voice because it’s simpler. In an active sentence, the subject is doing the action. A straightforward example is the sentence “Steve loves Amy.” Steve is the subject, and he is doing the action: he loves Amy, the object of the sentence. Another example is the title of the Marvin Gaye song “I Heard It through the Grapevine.” “I” is the subject, the one who is doing the action. “I” is hearing “it,” the object of the sentence. What Is Passive Voice? In passive voice, the target of the action gets promoted to the subject position. Instead of saying, “Steve loves Amy,” I would say, “Amy is loved by Steve.” The subject of the sentence becomes Amy, but she isn’t doing anything. Rather, she is just the recipient of Steve’s love. The focus of the sentence has changed from Steve to Amy. If you wanted to make the title of the Marvin Gaye song passive, you would say “It was heard by me through the grapevine,” not such a catchy title anymore. Is “To Be” a Sign of a Passive Sentence? A lot of people think all sentences that contain a form of the verb “to be” are in passive voice, but that isn’t true. For example, the sentence “I am holding a pen” is in active voice, but it uses the verb “am,” which is a form of “to be.” The passive form of that sentence is “The pen is being held by me.” Notice that the subject, the pen, isn’t doing anything in that sentence. It’s not taking an action; it’s passive. One clue that your sentence is passive is that the subject isn’t taking a direct action. Is Passive Voice Always Wrong? Passive voice isn’t wrong, but it’s often a poor way to present your thoughts. Another important point is that passive sentences aren’t incorrect; it’s just that they often aren’t the best way to phrase your thoughts. Sometimes passive voice is awkward and other times it’s vague. Also, passive voice is usually wordy, so you can tighten your writing if you replace passive sentences with active sentence. When you put sentences in passive voice, it’s easy to leave out the person or thing doing the action. For example, “Amy is loved,” is passive. The problem with that sentence is that you don’t know who loves Amy. Politicians often use passive voice to intentionally obscure the idea of who is taking the action. Ronald Reagan famously said, “Mistakes were made,” when referring to the Iran-Contra scandal. Other examples of passive voice for political reasons could include “Bombs were dropped,” and “Shots were fired.” Pay attention to the news and listen for examples of passive voice. Also, a reader named Matthew commented that businesses sometimes use passive voice. He notes that it sounds better to write, “Your electricity will be shut off,” than “We, the electric company, will be shutting off your power.” Is Passive Voice Hard to Understand? A recent study suggests that less educated people–those who dropped out of school when they were 16–have a harder time understanding sentences written in the passive voice than those written in active voice. I only had access to the press release, not the original study, but the results made it seem as if you should stick with active voice if you’re writing for the general population. Now let’s talk about some common scenarios where passive voice does help and why. In crime reports In fiction writing In scientific writing Use Passive Voice When the Subject is Unknown On the other hand, sometimes passive voice does have advantages. For example, if you truly don’t know who is taking the action, then you can’t name the person. This is especially common with crime reports. For example, a security guard might write “The store was robbed,” because nobody knows who the robber was. Use Passive Voice in Fiction to Emphasize Specific Details Passive voice is also sometimes useful in fiction writing . For example, if you were writing a mystery novel and you wanted to highlight missing cookies because they are central to the story, passive voice is the best option. It would make more sense to write, “The cookies were stolen,” instead of “Somebody stole the cookies.” The difference is subtle, but in the passive sentence “The cookies were stolen,” the focus is on the cookies. In “Somebody stole the cookies,” the focus would be on the unknown somebody. Passive voice can be helpful if you want to create a sense of mystery in your sentence, which is also a reason that it’s not usually a good choice when you’re writing nonfiction and you want your writing to be clear . Use Passive Voice in Scientific Writing to Create Objectivity An exception is that scientists are often encouraged to write in passive voice to lend their writing a sense of objectivity–to take themselves and their actions and opinions out of the experimental results. I used to be a scientist and I always found that odd. It felt as if we were trying to hide that real people did the experiments. Some scientific style guides do allow for a limited use of active voice (1). For example, it may be OK to write, “We sequenced the DNA,” instead of “The DNA was sequenced,” but it’s still considered bad for scientists to insert themselves into conclusions. For example, it would be bad scientific form to write “We believe the mutation causes cancer.” But you still don’t need passive voice to achieve your goals. For example, the active sentence “We believe the mutation causes cancer,” could be changed to “The data suggests that the mutation causes cancer.” That’s still active, but it eliminates the sense of subjectivity. Did Strunk & White Get Passive Voice Wrong? Finally, I have to include a note about Strunk & White’s treatment of passive voice. In their classic book, The Elements of Style , three of their four examples of passive voice aren’t actually passive voice sentences. I’ve included two links below that explain the problems, but if you rely on The Elements of Style , as so many people do, be aware that this is a problem with that book. 50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice (The Chronicle of Higher Education) English Passive Voice (Wikipedia) Web Bonus: Watson & Crick Watson and Crick’s famous paper about the discovery of the structure of DNA, written in 1953, contains both active and passive sentences; We wish to suggest a structure for the salt of deoxyribose nucleic acid (D.N.A.). (active) We have made the usual chemical assumptions, namely, that each chain consists of phosphate diester groups joining beta-D-deoxyribofuranose residues with 3′,5′ linkages. (active) If it is assumed that the bases only occur in the structure in the most plausible tautomeric forms (that is, with the keto rather than the enol configurations) it is found that only specific pairs of bases can bond together. (passive) It has been found experimentally that the ratio of the amounts of adenine to thymine, and the ratio of guanine to cytosine, are always very close to unity for deoxyribose nucleic acid. (passive) References 1. “Writing in the Sciences,” The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Visit to the https://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/sciences.html (accessed July 23, 2010) Pencil and note paper from Pixabay
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By [Mignon Fogarty](https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/author/mignonfogarty/ "Posts by Mignon Fogarty") July 22, 2010 [No Comments](https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/articles/active-voice-versus-passive-voice/#respond)7 Mins Read [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.quickanddirtytips.com%2Farticles%2Factive-voice-versus-passive-voice%2F "Share on Facebook") [Twitter](https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.quickanddirtytips.com%2Farticles%2Factive-voice-versus-passive-voice%2F&text=Active%20Voice%20Versus%20Passive%20Voice "Share on X (Twitter)") [Pinterest](https://pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.quickanddirtytips.com%2Farticles%2Factive-voice-versus-passive-voice%2F&media=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.quickanddirtytips.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2010%2F07%2FUntitled-design-1.png&description=Active%20Voice%20Versus%20Passive%20Voice "Share on Pinterest") [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.quickanddirtytips.com%2Farticles%2Factive-voice-versus-passive-voice%2F "Share on LinkedIn") [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/share/link?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.quickanddirtytips.com%2Farticles%2Factive-voice-versus-passive-voice%2F&name=Active%20Voice%20Versus%20Passive%20Voice "Share on Tumblr") [Email](mailto:?subject=Active%20Voice%20Versus%20Passive%20Voice&body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.quickanddirtytips.com%2Farticles%2Factive-voice-versus-passive-voice%2F "Share via Email") [![ Apple Podcast main Page 91dTBhqock](https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Apple-Podcasts.png)](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/grammar-girl-quick-dirty-tips/id173429229?mt=2) [![ Spotify Podcast main Page Slv4P0vRyF](https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/172-1727421_podcast-subscribe-listen-button-spotify-transparent-spotify-hd.png)](https://open.spotify.com/show/3gRQiaxv3M01MxxBIMxkAy) [![ Amazon Play Podcast main Page WDLg061evX](https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/US_ListenOn_AmazonMusic_Button_US_White.png)](https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/0e228389-7170-4410-b77e-814da4f7e7f0/grammar-girl-quick-and-dirty-tips-for-better-writing) [![a green pencil](https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Untitled-design-1-768x401.png)](https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Untitled-design-1.png "Active Voice Versus Passive Voice") Share [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.quickanddirtytips.com%2Farticles%2Factive-voice-versus-passive-voice%2F "Facebook") [Twitter](https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.quickanddirtytips.com%2Farticles%2Factive-voice-versus-passive-voice%2F&text=Active%20Voice%20Versus%20Passive%20Voice "Twitter") [Pinterest](https://pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.quickanddirtytips.com%2Farticles%2Factive-voice-versus-passive-voice%2F&media=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.quickanddirtytips.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2010%2F07%2FUntitled-design-1.png&description=Active%20Voice%20Versus%20Passive%20Voice "Pinterest") [WhatsApp](https://wa.me/?text=Active%20Voice%20Versus%20Passive%20Voice%20https%3A%2F%2Fwww.quickanddirtytips.com%2Farticles%2Factive-voice-versus-passive-voice%2F "WhatsApp") [Email](mailto:?subject=Active%20Voice%20Versus%20Passive%20Voice&body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.quickanddirtytips.com%2Farticles%2Factive-voice-versus-passive-voice%2F "Email") Today’s topic is active voice versus passive voice. Here’s a question from Brian in Iowa. He writes, “It drives me crazy when people write in passive voice. How can I teach people how to tell the difference between passive and active voice and to stay away from passive voice?” Well, Brian is right, the first step is to help people understand the difference between active and passive voice, because many people believe they should avoid the passive voice, but fewer people can define it or recognize it. ## What Is Active Voice? I’ll start with active voice because it’s simpler. In an active sentence, the subject is doing the action. A straightforward example is the sentence “Steve loves Amy.” Steve is the subject, and he is doing the action: he loves Amy, the object of the sentence. Another example is the title of the Marvin Gaye song “I Heard It through the Grapevine.” “I” is the subject, the one who is doing the action. “I” is hearing “it,” the object of the sentence. ## What Is Passive Voice? In passive voice, the target of the action gets promoted to the subject position. Instead of saying, “Steve loves Amy,” I would say, “Amy is loved by Steve.” The subject of the sentence becomes Amy, but she isn’t doing anything. Rather, she is just the recipient of Steve’s love. The focus of the sentence has changed from Steve to Amy. If you wanted to make the title of the Marvin Gaye song passive, you would say “It was heard by me through the grapevine,” not such a catchy title anymore. ## Is “To Be” a Sign of a Passive Sentence? A lot of people think all sentences that contain a form of the verb “to be” are in passive voice, but that isn’t true. For example, the sentence “I am holding a pen” is in active voice, but it uses the verb “am,” which is a form of “to be.” The passive form of that sentence is “The pen is being held by me.” Notice that the subject, the pen, isn’t doing anything in that sentence. It’s not taking an action; it’s passive. One clue that your sentence is passive is that the subject isn’t taking a direct action. ## Is Passive Voice Always Wrong? Passive voice isn’t wrong, but it’s often a poor way to present your thoughts. Another important point is that passive sentences aren’t incorrect; it’s just that they often aren’t the best way to phrase your thoughts. Sometimes passive voice is awkward and other times it’s vague. Also, passive voice is usually wordy, so you can tighten your writing if you replace passive sentences with active sentence. When you put sentences in passive voice, it’s easy to leave out the person or thing doing the action. For example, “Amy is loved,” is passive. The problem with that sentence is that you don’t know who loves Amy. Politicians often use passive voice to intentionally obscure the idea of who is taking the action. Ronald Reagan famously said, “Mistakes were made,” when referring to the Iran-Contra scandal. Other examples of passive voice for political reasons could include “Bombs were dropped,” and “Shots were fired.” Pay attention to the news and listen for examples of passive voice. Also, a reader named Matthew commented that businesses sometimes use passive voice. He notes that it sounds better to write, “Your electricity will be shut off,” than “We, the electric company, will be shutting off your power.” ## Is Passive Voice Hard to Understand? [A recent study](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100706082156.htm) suggests that less educated people–those who dropped out of school when they were 16–have a harder time understanding sentences written in the passive voice than those written in active voice. I only had access to the press release, not the original study, but the results made it seem as if you should stick with active voice if you’re writing for the general population. Now let’s talk about some common scenarios where passive voice does help and why. 1. In crime reports 2. In fiction writing 3. In scientific writing ## Use Passive Voice When the Subject is Unknown On the other hand, sometimes passive voice does have advantages. For example, if you truly don’t know who is taking the action, then you can’t name the person. This is especially common with crime reports. For example, a security guard might write “The store was robbed,” because nobody knows who the robber was. ## Use Passive Voice in Fiction to Emphasize Specific Details Passive voice is also sometimes useful in [fiction writing](https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/how-to-write-your-first-novel). For example, if you were writing a mystery novel and you wanted to highlight missing cookies because they are central to the story, passive voice is the best option. It would make more sense to write, “The cookies were stolen,” instead of “Somebody stole the cookies.” The difference is subtle, but in the passive sentence “The cookies were stolen,” the focus is on the cookies. In “Somebody stole the cookies,” the focus would be on the unknown somebody. Passive voice can be helpful if you want to create a sense of mystery in your sentence, which is also a reason that it’s not usually a good choice when you’re writing nonfiction and you [want your writing to be clear](https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/how-to-write-clear-sentences). ## Use Passive Voice in Scientific Writing to Create Objectivity An exception is that scientists are often encouraged to write in passive voice to lend their writing a sense of objectivity–to take themselves and their actions and opinions out of the experimental results. I used to be a scientist and I always found that odd. It felt as if we were trying to hide that real people did the experiments. Some scientific [style guides](https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/why-would-anyone-use-the-chicago-manual-of-style) do allow for a limited use of active voice (1). For example, it may be OK to write, “We sequenced the DNA,” instead of “The DNA was sequenced,” but it’s still considered bad for scientists to insert themselves into conclusions. For example, it would be bad scientific form to write “We believe the mutation causes cancer.” But you still don’t need passive voice to achieve your goals. For example, the active sentence “We believe the mutation causes cancer,” could be changed to “The data suggests that the mutation causes cancer.” That’s still active, but it eliminates the sense of subjectivity. ## Did Strunk & White Get Passive Voice Wrong? Finally, I have to include a note about [Strunk & White’s](https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/strunk-and-white) treatment of passive voice. In their classic book, The Elements of Style, three of their four examples of passive voice aren’t actually passive voice sentences. I’ve included two links below that explain the problems, but if you rely on The Elements of Style, as so many people do, be aware that this is a problem with that book. [50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice](https://chronicle.com/article/50-Years-of-Stupid-Grammar/25497) (The Chronicle of Higher Education) [English Passive Voice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_passive_voice#Misapplication_of_the_term) (Wikipedia) powered by [Typeform](https://admin.typeform.com/signup?utm_campaign=WzTkku&utm_source=typeform.com-01E4C840PR51P318AJHS7FNC1B-professional&utm_medium=typeform&utm_content=typeform-embedded-poweredbytypeform&utm_term=EN) ## Web Bonus: Watson & Crick [Watson and Crick’s famous paper](https://www.exploratorium.edu/origins/coldspring/printit.html) about the discovery of the structure of DNA, written in 1953, contains both active and passive sentences; We wish to suggest a structure for the salt of deoxyribose nucleic acid (D.N.A.). (active) We have made the usual chemical assumptions, namely, that each chain consists of phosphate diester groups joining beta-D-deoxyribofuranose residues with 3′,5′ linkages. (active) If it is assumed that the bases only occur in the structure in the most plausible tautomeric forms (that is, with the keto rather than the enol configurations) it is found that only specific pairs of bases can bond together. (passive) It has been found experimentally that the ratio of the amounts of adenine to thymine, and the ratio of guanine to cytosine, are always very close to unity for deoxyribose nucleic acid. (passive) References - 1\. “Writing in the Sciences,” The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, [Visit to the https://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/sciences.html](https://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/sciences.html "Click on sciences page") (accessed July 23, 2010) [Pencil and note paper](https://pixabay.com/en/pencil-note-paper-writing-drawing-2269/) from Pixabay [Mignon Fogarty](https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/author/mignonfogarty/ "Posts by Mignon Fogarty") - [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/GrammarGirl/ "Facebook") - [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/thegrammargirl/ "Instagram") - [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/grammar-girl "LinkedIn") Mignon Fogarty is the founder of Quick and Dirty Tips and the author of seven books on language, including the New York Times bestseller "[Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing](https://amzn.to/2KcTqWX)." She is an inductee in the Podcasting Hall of Fame, and the show is a five-time winner of Best Education Podcast in the Podcast Awards. She has appeared as a guest expert on the Oprah Winfrey Show and the Today Show. Her popular [LinkedIn Learning courses](https://www.linkedin.com/learning/instructors/mignon-fogarty) help people write better to communicate better. Find her on [Mastodon](https://zirk.us/@grammargirl). [Add A Comment](https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/articles/active-voice-versus-passive-voice/) Comments are closed. ##### Don't Miss ## [Was Parson Brown from ‘Winter Wonderland’ a Real Person?](https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/articles/was-parson-brown-from-winter-wonderland-a-real-person/) By [Ashley Dodge](https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/author/ashleydodge/ "Posts by Ashley Dodge") December 7, 2025 When "Winter Wonderland" was written in the 1930s, "parson" was a term for Protestant or Anglican ministers. 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Readable Markdown	Today’s topic is active voice versus passive voice. Here’s a question from Brian in Iowa. He writes, “It drives me crazy when people write in passive voice. How can I teach people how to tell the difference between passive and active voice and to stay away from passive voice?” Well, Brian is right, the first step is to help people understand the difference between active and passive voice, because many people believe they should avoid the passive voice, but fewer people can define it or recognize it. ## What Is Active Voice? I’ll start with active voice because it’s simpler. In an active sentence, the subject is doing the action. A straightforward example is the sentence “Steve loves Amy.” Steve is the subject, and he is doing the action: he loves Amy, the object of the sentence. Another example is the title of the Marvin Gaye song “I Heard It through the Grapevine.” “I” is the subject, the one who is doing the action. “I” is hearing “it,” the object of the sentence. ## What Is Passive Voice? In passive voice, the target of the action gets promoted to the subject position. Instead of saying, “Steve loves Amy,” I would say, “Amy is loved by Steve.” The subject of the sentence becomes Amy, but she isn’t doing anything. Rather, she is just the recipient of Steve’s love. The focus of the sentence has changed from Steve to Amy. If you wanted to make the title of the Marvin Gaye song passive, you would say “It was heard by me through the grapevine,” not such a catchy title anymore. ## Is “To Be” a Sign of a Passive Sentence? A lot of people think all sentences that contain a form of the verb “to be” are in passive voice, but that isn’t true. For example, the sentence “I am holding a pen” is in active voice, but it uses the verb “am,” which is a form of “to be.” The passive form of that sentence is “The pen is being held by me.” Notice that the subject, the pen, isn’t doing anything in that sentence. It’s not taking an action; it’s passive. One clue that your sentence is passive is that the subject isn’t taking a direct action. ## Is Passive Voice Always Wrong? Passive voice isn’t wrong, but it’s often a poor way to present your thoughts. Another important point is that passive sentences aren’t incorrect; it’s just that they often aren’t the best way to phrase your thoughts. Sometimes passive voice is awkward and other times it’s vague. Also, passive voice is usually wordy, so you can tighten your writing if you replace passive sentences with active sentence. When you put sentences in passive voice, it’s easy to leave out the person or thing doing the action. For example, “Amy is loved,” is passive. The problem with that sentence is that you don’t know who loves Amy. Politicians often use passive voice to intentionally obscure the idea of who is taking the action. Ronald Reagan famously said, “Mistakes were made,” when referring to the Iran-Contra scandal. Other examples of passive voice for political reasons could include “Bombs were dropped,” and “Shots were fired.” Pay attention to the news and listen for examples of passive voice. Also, a reader named Matthew commented that businesses sometimes use passive voice. He notes that it sounds better to write, “Your electricity will be shut off,” than “We, the electric company, will be shutting off your power.” ## Is Passive Voice Hard to Understand? [A recent study](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100706082156.htm) suggests that less educated people–those who dropped out of school when they were 16–have a harder time understanding sentences written in the passive voice than those written in active voice. I only had access to the press release, not the original study, but the results made it seem as if you should stick with active voice if you’re writing for the general population. Now let’s talk about some common scenarios where passive voice does help and why. 1. In crime reports 2. In fiction writing 3. In scientific writing ## Use Passive Voice When the Subject is Unknown On the other hand, sometimes passive voice does have advantages. For example, if you truly don’t know who is taking the action, then you can’t name the person. This is especially common with crime reports. For example, a security guard might write “The store was robbed,” because nobody knows who the robber was. ## Use Passive Voice in Fiction to Emphasize Specific Details Passive voice is also sometimes useful in [fiction writing](https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/how-to-write-your-first-novel). For example, if you were writing a mystery novel and you wanted to highlight missing cookies because they are central to the story, passive voice is the best option. It would make more sense to write, “The cookies were stolen,” instead of “Somebody stole the cookies.” The difference is subtle, but in the passive sentence “The cookies were stolen,” the focus is on the cookies. In “Somebody stole the cookies,” the focus would be on the unknown somebody. Passive voice can be helpful if you want to create a sense of mystery in your sentence, which is also a reason that it’s not usually a good choice when you’re writing nonfiction and you [want your writing to be clear](https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/how-to-write-clear-sentences). ## Use Passive Voice in Scientific Writing to Create Objectivity An exception is that scientists are often encouraged to write in passive voice to lend their writing a sense of objectivity–to take themselves and their actions and opinions out of the experimental results. I used to be a scientist and I always found that odd. It felt as if we were trying to hide that real people did the experiments. Some scientific [style guides](https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/why-would-anyone-use-the-chicago-manual-of-style) do allow for a limited use of active voice (1). For example, it may be OK to write, “We sequenced the DNA,” instead of “The DNA was sequenced,” but it’s still considered bad for scientists to insert themselves into conclusions. For example, it would be bad scientific form to write “We believe the mutation causes cancer.” But you still don’t need passive voice to achieve your goals. For example, the active sentence “We believe the mutation causes cancer,” could be changed to “The data suggests that the mutation causes cancer.” That’s still active, but it eliminates the sense of subjectivity. ## Did Strunk & White Get Passive Voice Wrong? Finally, I have to include a note about [Strunk & White’s](https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/strunk-and-white) treatment of passive voice. In their classic book, The Elements of Style, three of their four examples of passive voice aren’t actually passive voice sentences. I’ve included two links below that explain the problems, but if you rely on The Elements of Style, as so many people do, be aware that this is a problem with that book. [50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice](https://chronicle.com/article/50-Years-of-Stupid-Grammar/25497) (The Chronicle of Higher Education) [English Passive Voice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_passive_voice#Misapplication_of_the_term) (Wikipedia) ## Web Bonus: Watson & Crick [Watson and Crick’s famous paper](https://www.exploratorium.edu/origins/coldspring/printit.html) about the discovery of the structure of DNA, written in 1953, contains both active and passive sentences; We wish to suggest a structure for the salt of deoxyribose nucleic acid (D.N.A.). (active) We have made the usual chemical assumptions, namely, that each chain consists of phosphate diester groups joining beta-D-deoxyribofuranose residues with 3′,5′ linkages. (active) If it is assumed that the bases only occur in the structure in the most plausible tautomeric forms (that is, with the keto rather than the enol configurations) it is found that only specific pairs of bases can bond together. (passive) It has been found experimentally that the ratio of the amounts of adenine to thymine, and the ratio of guanine to cytosine, are always very close to unity for deoxyribose nucleic acid. (passive) References - 1\. “Writing in the Sciences,” The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, [Visit to the https://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/sciences.html](https://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/sciences.html "Click on sciences page") (accessed July 23, 2010) [Pencil and note paper](https://pixabay.com/en/pencil-note-paper-writing-drawing-2269/) from Pixabay
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