In my latest article on the ATA Chronicle, the flagship publication of the American Translators Association, I explore passive voice. The title of the article is “Passive Voices Peace: Reconsidering the Ban on the Passive Voice in Your Writing.” Just yesterday, I experienced how relevant this is when I had to stop a writing coach in their tracks for propagating the poor advice that passive should be replaced by active voice to make the writing more vivid.
We all know that “mistakes were made” is an infelicitous phrase, but hiding the agent is not at all all the passive is good for. The advice I mentioned shows exactly why the passive is powerful. The author wrote: “I was given the news that I had stage 4 cancer.” The coach suggested: “Doctors gave me the news that… or better yet, Doctor so and so gave me the news that…” No! Who cares which doctor! (No disrespect to medical professionals dishing out the news and caring for the patients.) The patient–quite literally–is at the center of this story! That’s one of the uses of the passive: to front the theme of a transitive event and push the damn agent to the side. In a culture obsessed with agency, it does seem like a strange idea. But, as philosopher Julia Kristeva explained, the passive gives voice to the disenfranchised. I’d add it gives voice to those on the receiving end, whether exploited or exalted.
Another use of the passive is to lighten the processing effort of a reader when an agent requires a lengthy explanation, as in this partial summary of This Is Us (yes, I watch it): “The baby, Jack told his wife, had been brought to the hospital by a fireman, who had been dissuaded from ad[ting the child himself.”
Perhaps the more playful use of the passive is to shine light on the damn subject by introducing it last. I love this example, which I borrowed from a Twitter post: “Whole Foods, who packs a month’s supply of food in a paper bag, was bought by Amazon, who ships a paper clip in a refrigerator box.” Tell me the truth, it wouldn’t have had the same effect if Amazon was the subject of that sentence, right?
One last nerdy point for those grammar lovers out there: the passive creates symmetry between transitive and intransitive verbs. Intransitive verbs can have agents as subjects, as in “The storm roared on.” Or they can have themes as subjects (which ordinarily function as objects of transitive sentences), as in “The city collapsed.” So, for transitive verbs, we can do the same thing by inverting the syntactic order of agent and theme in active and passive voice, as in “The storm destroyed the city” and “The city was destroyed by the storm.”
Think about a story where you are questioning city officials for infrastructure maintenance: “The city was destroyed by the storm” might be your choice. Now, if you are writing about climate change, “The storm destroyed the city” may serve you better. Active versus passive voice is simply a tool to align the topic of your sentence with the topic of your message. Use it, don’t let it be misunderstood!
