Intro

Want to write better? I make this promise: train yourself to never use the following words and experience a writing transformation to new heights of greatness! I defy anyone to give me a sentence that Active Voice cannot improve. Why? Active voice forces you to add content!

Do NOT use these words!

am

is

are

was

will

were

has

had

have

been

be

Now, like myself you probably heard this same lecture in grammar school and largely ignored it. For me, I only truly understood the power behind this technique when my Clarkson University college professor, David Craig, showed me that in every case, rewriting sentences without these evil words simply leads to great writing.

Others dispute my usage of the word every but I confidently stand behind it.

Yes, writing in pure active voice requires effort! Don't worry! Go ahead and write as you normally would when getting started. Consider this first draft as your prototype. Then go back and remove the passive voice. Doing so will reveal to you the gaps in your thought process that passive voice hides.

Why does it work?

Take a look first at why does passive voice fails: it allows the write to make empty statement. Consider the famous line...

Passive	Active
mistakes were made	Bob made mistakes

You often find that liberal politicians use passive voice; it excels at creating moods and feelings but omits specifics.

Passive voice works because it forces you to think, and reveals what you haven't said.

Passive	Active
This is a report on the 1999 Chevrolet station wagon. It will give testing results.	Performance testing results follow in this 1999 Chevrolet station wagon report

Passive	Active
All men are created equal	GOD created all men equally!

Last but not least, active voice makes your writing stand out because it sounds different than the writing most people do. Writers and speakers habitually use PV to the degree that listeners now expect to always hear it. Your active voice therefore jumps off the page - almost in the same way that a British accent attracts attention in the USA.

What gets hidden with passive voice?

Sometimes, the 'who'. And as you can see in this case, the 'when' fell into place.

Passive	Active
Suspects are wanted for robbery.	The police seek the suspects related to the robbery last week

Sometimes, details about the hidden subject emerge with the thought process active voice requires...

Passive	Active
As a result, head to-head performance comparisons with AMD’s Athlon can be misleading	As a result, head to-head performance comparisons with AMD’s Athlon can mislead people unaware of the gains realized with Intel-tuned code.

Here, converting to active voice forces out details about what did the scanning. We also make the second statement more direct. We also reduced the number of words by 8 (30%) while saying more.

Passive	This email has been scanned for all viruses and found to be virus free. If you have questions regarding this scanning please visit the Information Services website
Active	The ACME email scanner detected no known viruses in your email. For related questions, visit the Information Services website

Active voice conversion reduces words, especially when eliminating the word 'will'. Although not a passive word, often a writer can eliminate that (though at first these that-less sentences seem uncomfortable to some that-aholics)

Passive	Active
Students will spend nine weeks to complete Word Masters, a challenging vocabulary curriculum that teaches analogies.	Students spend nine weeks completing Word Masters, a challenging vocabulary curriculum teaching analogies.
Cursive will be used school-wide starting this year. All work submitted by students is to be completed in cursive.	Starting this year, every student (all grades) exclusively uses cursive writing for every assignment.

see also

How can I fix this one?

I enjoyed and was impressed with everyone on your team

Misc Examples

Passive	Active
I am so fortunate to have this job	I want no other job

Here's an example...who gave you the gift? Is hides the answer.

Passive	Active
Time is your most precious gift	God gave you no gift more precious than time

Passive	It is with a keen sense of anticipation that we look forward to ...
Active	With a keen sense of anticipation we look forward to ...

(not really passive, but the added guidance of Ms. Lucinda Wong regarding 'get' and 'got'

Using 'got'	Many loops got vectorized
Avoiding 'got'	The compiler vectorized many loops

A progression of improvements...

Is it possible I have been configured to see everything but MKL?

Is it possible I have access to everything but MKL?

Is it possible my account can access everything save MKL?

Do you think my account can access everything save MKL?

Removing 'will'

if you train yourself to never use the following words, your writing will improve.

train yourself to never use the following words and experience a transformation of your writing!

OK	Better
I will never forget	I vividly remember

The progression forces you to move the most important part to the front (the rate of on-the-job training)

The most exciting aspect was the immense rate of on-the-job learning

Most exciting of all was...

The immense rate of on-the-job learning excited me most of all

Nice example from here...it 'personifies' the prose.

These recommendations contemplate bipedal threats, as well as potentially dangerous North American animals - bears, mountain lions, wolves, coyotes, etc.

See also

• This great writeup found by JohnYates, who does NOT take as strict and unrelenting a stand on passive voice. For one thing, passive voice is absolutely REQUIRED in certain situations. Take fiction novels, where you are trying to introduce mystery. For example, when someone has been shot, or a mysterious letter is found on the table, etc. Situations also arise in business and life in general when you intentionally wish to obscure the actor in a sentence for any number of reasons.

TODO

• Have examples (I give the passive, you fill in the active, then compare to my answer)
• Have fun reading great and not-so-great writings and speeches to see if a correlation exists with PV/AV.

-- MattWalsh - 26 Jun 2002

-- MattWalsh - 11 Nov 2011