As a writer, you can easily find and fix passive voice in your writing to make your writing more clear and concise. Passive sentences aren’t incorrect, they often just aren’t the best way to phrase your thoughts in a direct manner. Passive voice tends to be more vague and wordy, so by replacing passive sentences with active sentences you can also tighten your writing. Politicians often use passive voice to intentionally obscure the subject of the action. For example, in politics, people will often say “Bombs were dropped,” or “Shots were fired,” obscuring the subject of the action itself. Although this kind of speech is useful in politics, you probably don’t want such vague language when trying to convey your thoughts in an essay.
In an active sentence, the subject of the sentence does the action.
For example, in the active sentence “Cody loves Tiffany,” Cody is the subject doing the action and Tiffany is the object of the sentence, receiving the action. This sentence clearly describes the doer and receiver of the action in a clear and concise manner.
When using the passive voice, the object of the action becomes the subject of the sentence.
So, instead of saying the active sentence, “Scientists use calculators,” you would say, “Calculators are used by scientists.” Scientists become the subject of the verb (use), but the focus of the sentences changes from scientists to calculators. While this example is obviously much more simple than your sentences will usually be, practice with identifying and correcting instances of passive voice will make you a pro in instinctively writing in active voice.
Identifying and Revising Passive Sentences
A word search can help you uncover passive sentences.
Often, just looking for “have” and “had” or “has” in your sentences helps to identify instances of passive voice than can easily be fixed, either by exchanging them for other, active verbs or by rearranging your sentence to eliminate the need for the various conjugations of the verb “to have”completely.
For example, this passive sentence:
“In deciding whether to approve the Keystone oil pipeline, President Obama has been faced by a choice between alienating environmental advocates or causing a deep rift with Canada.”
Can easily be fixed by identifying the use of “have” and eliminating it for an active verb:
“In deciding whether to approve the Keystone oil pipeline, President Obama faces a choice between alienating environmental advocates or causing a deep rift with Canada.”