Active vs Passive Voice, With Examples
2 min read
Short answer
The difference
Every action has someone or something doing it. The voice of a sentence is about where that doer sits.
- Active: The chef burned the toast. The subject (the chef) does the action.
- Passive: The toast was burned by the chef. The subject (the toast) has the action done to it, and the doer moves to the end — or disappears.
The passive is not a grammar mistake. It is a choice, and like any choice it can be made well or badly.
How to spot it
A passive sentence has two parts: a form of to be (is, are, was, were, be, been, being) followed by a past participle (approved, taken, written, burned).
- The report was written last week.
- Mistakes have been made.
- The results will be announced tomorrow.
A handy test: if you can add “by zombies” after the verb and the sentence still makes grammatical sense, it is passive. The report was written by zombies works, so it is passive. The team wrote the report by zombies does not.
Why the active is usually better
It is shorter. The researchers carried out the experiment is seven words; The experiment was carried out by the researchers is nine. Across a long document, that adds up — see how to reduce your word count.
It is clearer about who did what. Mistakes were made tells the reader nothing about who made them. That vagueness is sometimes the point — which is why readers distrust it.
It reads faster. Readers expect the doer first. Sentences that follow that order take less effort to follow.
To fix a passive sentence
- Find the doer. It often follows by; if there is no by, ask who did it.
- Make the doer the subject.
- Put the verb in its active form.
| Passive | Active |
|---|---|
| The decision was made by the board. | The board made the decision. |
| Your application has been received. | We have received your application. |
| It was agreed that the office would close. | We agreed to close the office. |
When the passive is the right choice
- The doer is unknown or unimportant. My bike was stolen. You don’t know who took it.
- The thing acted on is the point. The vaccine was approved in 2021. The vaccine is the story, not the regulator.
- Scientific methods sections, where many fields expect The samples were heated to 90°C rather than We heated the samples. Check what your field or journal prefers.
- Keeping the focus steady. In a paragraph about a building, The tower was completed in 1889 keeps the tower as the subject of every sentence.
A useful target for most writing is to use the active by default and choose the passive on purpose, rather than drifting into it.