Passive Voice

I tend to have a view of the passive voice opposite of most writers. I get offended and angry when I hear people say "avoid the passive voice." That makes it sound like it is an abomination of language, and too many people avoid it without having any reason why they should.

You know what that's called?  Prejudice. And I'm pretty sure that prejudice is a bad thing.

The reality is that the passive voice is a tool, just like any other one you have. It has a purpose and if you use it for its intended purpose, it will work just fine. The problem is when you use it improperly.

Consider these sentences:
The dog bit Brian.
Brian was bitten by the dog.

The first is active; the second is passive. They convey the same information but have subtle differences.

In English, we generally focus on the first noun we hear in a sentence. Because of that, the active sentence focuses on the subject and the passive sentence focuses on the object.

Unfortunately, examples of active and passive voice tend to suck because there is no context.  The active voice in this example makes sense when you are telling a story about the dog. If you are telling a story about Brian, then passive may fit better. "Did Esmeralda tell you? Brian was bitten by the dog." (I challenge anybody to tell me the passive voice is in any way weak here.)

The other use of the passive voice is if you don't have an object. "Brian was bitten." We have no idea who or what bit him, but we know he was bitten. Admittedly, you can also say "Something bit Brian" and take care of that problem, but that is a second use of it.

I have really found recently how significantly weaker the passive voice is in many situations. I have heard it used poorly a lot and I can feel how ineffective it is. What surprised me was that, if I didn't know what the problem was immediately, I would change the sentence to active because it sounded better, and then afterward I would realize that it was the only change I made.

The real problem, though, is that people use passive voice because they are writing by the seat of their pants. They type down words as they come to them, but sometimes that means they pick an important subject, and realize afterward that it is the object of a sentence, so they twist words around with the passive voice so they can keep moving forward. Using it for convenience like that is not what passive voice is intended for.

Know your tools. Know what they do, when to use them, and how not to use them. I would wager that there is nothing in writing that is always off limits, so you should always search for the answers of when you should use something.