This week's Grammar Grater is written by Grammar Grater's Cory Busse.
There has been no shortage of political debates recently. During the debates, one hears candidates taking heat for things they've done and said in the past. As the candidates respond, a few phrases come up again and again.
"Steps were taken..."
"Mistakes were made..."
"That was taken out of context..."
All of these are examples of passive voice. In school, a lot of us learned that passive voice was wrong and that it led to less dynamic writing. As we have done before, today we'll look at a form of writing that gets a bad rap, but doesn't always deserve it.
The American Heritage Book of English Usage summarizes passive voice as "verb forms that allow the subject to be the receiver (rather than the performer) of the verb's action."
A simple way to think about passive voice is by using this example:
The story was leaked by the press secretary.
In this case of passive voice, the story is the subject of the sentence. And it's having something done to it by the press secretary. The active voice example of this sentence would be:
The press secretary leaked the story.
Despite what we might have learned in school, the passive voice isn't always wrong or necessarily bad. The passive voice can have its uses, particularly when we don't know the performer of an action or when the performer's identity isn't relevant. Take our example, and imagine for the moment that we don't know who leaked the story.
The story was leaked.
In fact, this example is one of the most common ways in which the passive voice is used appropriately: to avoid assigning responsibility for an action. In everyday situations, focusing on the mistake-and not the person who made it-can be useful and more diplomatic.
Gordon Jarvie, in The Bloomsbury Grammar Guide, points out that the passive voice is also useful in scientific writing where readers aren't interested in the performer of the action. For example,
Samples of river water were collected in test tubes.
While passive voice has its place, using it can make writing wordy and needlessly complicated. Look at what happens to a famous call to action if we change its verbal voice from active to passive:
Ask not what can be done by your country for you, ask what can be done by you for your country.
Doesn't have quite the same ring, does it?
There is a quick way to determine if you are using too many passive constructions in your writing. The American Heritage Book of English Usage recommends circling every form of the verb be (is, are, were, etc.) and any other weak verbs such as seem, appear, and may. If your page is covered in circles, consider rewriting those sentences in the active voice.
[Download the entire episode here.]
Sources: The American Heritage Book of English Usage, and from The Bloomsbury Grammar Guide by Gordon Jarvie.
Songs from this Episode: "Mostly Tha Voice" by Gangstarr; "All Things Must Pass" by George Harrison.
About Grammar Grater
Grammar Grater is a weekly podcast from Minnesota Public Radio that looks at English words, grammar and usage in a time when everybody's a writer. And with the global nature of communication, there's not a single style guide everyone uses. Each week, host Luke Taylor and the Grammatis Personae Players (Cory Busse, Amy Ault and John Ryan) take a lighthearted approach to language by putting common linguistic bugbears through the Grammar Grater.
You can learn more about the podcast here and you can subscribe to the podcast by clicking this link: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/tools/podcasts/grammar_grater.xml
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Comments: 10
Nevertheless, in my experience most casual writers err far to the other side of this and still should be cautioned to avoid passive-voice constructions to improve their writing.
Jt's interesting that you turn to politics for your examples, because politicians need to avoid passive voice more than anyone. We, their constituents need to know who did what and whom to blame. Please don't let them off the hook.
In the meantime, this edict will continue to be ignored by me, just because I am annoyed by rigid rules, and in any case I'm not being paid for anything written by me. Or nothing written by me is being paid for.
:-)
That said, with so many blanket admonitions stating that the construction is always wrong, we wanted to point out that--while passive voice should be used sparingly--there are instances where it's perfectly okay.
Aniko! I never realized other languages don't have passive voice. What do the politicians do?
Hungarian has something similar to passive in limited situations that involve a state or condition (the door is closed, the address is written on the paper*), but when the emphasis is on the action (with or without an agent), the only normal structure is the active one. You can translate "the door was closed by Charles" word for word and people will understand what you mean, but the effect is humorous.
I any case the passive voice is a major bugbear for Hungarian learners of English, and the butt of many jokes, as its Hungarian name litarally means "the suffering structure" ("Passive" of course meant the same in Latin--think "the passion of Christ")
*Hungarian language mavens would object to the latter, suggesting it should be rewritten as "They wrote the address on the paper." The passive voice is generally seen as a foreign, Germanic feature, and condemned as vulgar even in those few kinds of uses that are common in normal Hungarian speech. This is sort of like the "don't end a sentence with a preposition" rule in English, and has the same result: in careful writing people paraphrase otherwise complately normal expressions to avoid looking uneducated.
We have passive constructions in French and in many cases they sound very natural to us as they help us emphasize something different. Obviously our teachers also tell us not to use passive voice when it is not necessary because it is always longer and sometimes "heavier".
But in French for example we would say sentences that translate to "The math teacher called me to the school to talk about my son's results" or " I was called to the school by the math teacher …" In the second sentence the emphasis is on the fact that I, as a mum, didn't have a choice.I would certainly have preferred not to go the my son's school but… In English of course it doesn't sound natural but in French it does.
Could you tell me if you would avoid using the following sentences? Now I'll have to think twice before using passive forms in English!
"He was last seen 3 days ago. "( talking about a missing person ). In French, a passive verb form has a stronger impact here than saying something like "Someone / his friends saw him 3 days ago". "He" is the person we are really interested in.
"Their website has been updated." Would you rather say " They have updated their website" , even though you don't know who did it – and even though it is not what matters? As the main thing is that now the website is better, the French language uses the passive form. For us the change is the real subject and using this form makes us focus on it.
Thank you for your thoughts. I really appreciate this programme.
As in French, when the emphasis is not so much on who or what performed the action, passive may be best.
Your first example, "He was last seen 3 days ago", is fine because the important part of that sentence is, as you said, "he" and when he was last seen. In that case, it does not matter who saw him. What matters is that it has been three days.
In your second example, "Their website has been updated" is also fine if you are stressing that the website is up to date and it does not matter who did the updating.
Donc dans ces exemples-ci, les langues française et anglaise sont semblables. Je vous remercie de nous écouter!
But there are many other constructions where the subject is not the thematic agent.
unaccusative: the book fell off the table. (who caused the book to fall?)
middle voice: the beer pours easily. (who's pouring the beer?)
psych verb: I'm afraid of monsters. (who's scaring me?)
Why does no one recommend that we should avoid constructions like these?