Passive Gets a Bad Rap

A. Ida Little

23 Feb 2025 — 2 min read

One time, hoping to win a scholarship, I wrote a short story about a forklift. I didn't win. I asked someone to proofread it for me and she said I had written a sentence in the passive voice. I wish I could say I knew what that meant at the time, but I didn't. She was right, though. In that case, speaking in an active voice made the sentence better.

Basically, if we are using the active voice, we mention who or what (the subject) first and then say what the subject did. In passive voice, we say what happened first, and after that, we may or may not even mention who or what made it happen.

I'm not a passive-aggressive person, but a passive person? Yes, I'm nice like that. The idea that using a passive voice in writing is often a bad thing makes me want to look deeper. Does someone need to speak up for the passive voice?

Maybe. The passive voice is definitely needed. If the person who did the thing needs to be anonymous, or if nobody knows who did the thing, or if it is unimportant, then the passive voice should be used. If the writer wants to emphasize the action over the subject, or to help the reader objectively view information, the passive voice is almost always preferred.

And then there are other things to consider. Some scientists say that the brain prefers listening to the passive voice and other scientists say that it takes the brain longer to process the information when it is presented with the passive voice. These ideas seem to contradict each other, unless the brain prefers to spend more time processing information. I am not a scientist, so I don't know.

But if the brain really does prefer to listen to the passive voice, perhaps we need to give that voice a little more credit.

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