#ACTIVE OR PASSIVE VOICE PROFESSIONAL#

#ACTIVE OR PASSIVE VOICE PROFESSIONAL#

Passive: Low-income renters were forced to leave their neighborhoods to make room for large scaled urban development.īecause readers may experience active voice sentences as clearer than passive voice sentences, professional writers are often urged to limit the use of passive voice. Active voice sentences may be more concise than passive voice sentences because they eliminate the need for a helping verb “be” and the preposition “by.” In the example below, note how placing emphasis on the agent (wealthy business CEOs) makes the sentence more informative and meaningful:Īctive: Wealthy business CEOs forced low-income renters to leave their neighborhoods to make room for large scaled urban development.

This is because they provide more information (the agent of the action), and possibly because native English speakers are accustomed to receiving the information in the order agent-action-receiver. Sentences containing active voice can be easier to process and understand than passive voice sentences. When it is stated, it is placed in a “by” prepositional phrase. The agent of the action is not always stated in a passive voice sentence. *These forms as well as the forms in the perfect progressive aspect (not included here) are uncommon. This is how passive is formed in different tenses: is, is being, was, will be) + the past participle form of the verb (e.g. In passive voice, the verb is composed of a form of “to be” (e.g. A main verb is passive when the subject of the sentence is the receiver of the action. A main verb is active when the subject of the sentence is the doer (or the agent) of the action. In a sentence, main verbs can be in active or passive voice. Word Order in Statements with Embedded Questions.Using Reduced Relative Clauses to Write Concisely.The Three Common Tenses Used in Academic Writing.Same Form, but Different Functions: Various Meanings of Verb+ing and Verb+ed.Reducing Informality in Academic Writing.Improving Cohesion: The 'Known/New Contract'.Combining Clauses to Avoid Comma Splices, Run-ons, and Fragments.Choosing Between Infinitive and Gerund: “To do” or “doing”?.

Use the passive voice when it is more important to focus on the recipient of an action than on who performed the action, such as when describing an experimental setup.Use the active voice as much as possible to create direct, clear, and concise sentences, especially when you are writing about the actions of people.However, writers often overuse the passive voice. If the subject is omitted (e.g., “the cookies were eaten”), it may result in confusion about who performed the action (did the children eat the cookies, or was it the dog?).īoth the active and the passive voice are permitted in APA Style. Passive voic e: the object of the verb is followed by the verb (usually a form of “to be” + past participle + the word “by”) and then the subject (e.g., “the cookies were eaten by the children”).Active voice: the subject of a sentence is followed by the verb and then the object of the verb (e.g., “the children ate the cookies”).Voice describes the relationship between a verb and the subject and object associated with it.

Active or passive voice