Passive voice makes your writing boring and difficult to follow. Learn how to avoid it with these quick tips on rewriting sentences without passive voice, making your writing easier to read and understand.
“How to avoid passive voice in academic writing” is a blog post that provides quick tips for avoiding the passive voice. This can be difficult because it is often used as a way of being more concise. Read more in detail here: how to avoid passive voice in academic writing.
Have you ever put your work through a passive voice checker only to discover that you’ve written in the passive voice for the most of it? Are you trying to figure out how to avoid using the passive voice in your writing? We wouldn’t keep you in the dark regarding passive voice correction. You’ll know all you need to know about passive voice and how to prevent it by the conclusion of this essay.
You may already be familiar with active and passive voice. However, there are several fallacies around the detection of passive speech and how to prevent passive voice. Let’s begin by defining the terms “active voice” and “passive voice.”
What Is The Difference Between Active And Passive Voice?
To understand what passive voice is, you must first understand active and passive voice. The identification of voice in sentences is largely dependent on the structure of the phrase. The location of the subject and object in relation to the verb affects whether a sentence is written in the active or passive voice.
The subject of the action the verb describes is in the subject position, while the recipient is in the object position in the active voice. In the passive voice, however, the opposite is true. The subject receives the action in passive voice, while the object (if present) is in the object position. It’s that easy to tell the difference between active and passive speech.
Here are some instances of active vs. passive voice:
| Active | Passive |
|---|---|
| The ball was kicked by the player. | The football player booted the ball. |
| The song was performed by the pianist. | The pianist performed the tune. |
| The book was written by the author. | The author is the author of the book. |
| The professor found a solution to the dilemma. | The professor came up with a solution to the dilemma. |
| Joe will be invited to the party by Claret. | Joe is going to be invited to the celebration. |
Some of the features of passive voice, as you may have observed from the examples, are the usage of ‘to be’ verb forms and the use of ‘by.’ You should be aware, however, that not all uses of ‘to be’ verbs indicate passive voice. It has less to do with the verb employed and more to do with the structure of the phrase.
In Academic Writing, Use the Passive Voice
You may be wondering why it’s not a good idea to write in passive voice before we get into how to get rid of it. While passive voice may be employed purposefully in artistic writing, it is often frowned upon in academic writing. For these reasons, passive voice should be avoided in academic writing.
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Because passive voice lacks clarity and significance, academic writing instructors will urge you to avoid it. When you write in the passive person, your sentences become less understandable. Because the action’s doer is not evident in the statement, your message may be missed.
For instance, a novel sanitation technique was established. This passive sentence does not inform you who invented this new approach, and it leaves the reader with a question, which defeats the aim of scholarly writing. The previous line should be rewritten as: The Board of Directors established a new sanitation procedure.
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When employed to recap literary narratives and history, passive voice writing gives your work a sluggish vibe. When you write in the passive voice, it seems as if you haven’t taken the time to study up on the material that should be included in your work.
When you utilize the passive voice all the time, your work loses accuracy and context. The reader gets the impression that you haven’t given your thoughts any thought. As a result, avoid using passive voice as much as possible while summarizing in a literary work or a historical essay.
While using the passive voice in academic writing is not recommended, it is encouraged in scientific writing. Because the first person is eliminated, instructors feel that using passive voice in scientific writing provides your work an objective tone. There are, however, methods to employ the active voice in scientific writing while still retaining a neutral tone.
In general, it is recommended that you employ the active voice instead of the passive voice as often as possible. We’ve included some pointers on how to avoid using passive voice in the paragraphs below.
How To Avoid In Academic Writing, Use the Passive Voice
There are certain strategies you can employ to reduce passive voice in your academic writing. If you are wondering how to avoid In Academic Writing, Use the Passive Voice, you can follow these steps.
Step 1: Determine the sentence’s voice.
You must determine if the statement has an active or passive voice. The first step is to identify if you need to alter the passive voice to active voice in the statement. Take the following steps to determine the voice in which you wrote the sentence:
- Check to see whether the verb is a ‘to be’ verb with a past participle in the phrase. -ed is the most common ending for past participle verbs.
- Make sure the verb is correct. Is it a verb of action? Is the subject at the beginning and the object at the conclusion of the sentence? It’s in the passive voice if it’s an action verb and the subject and object aren’t positioned correctly.
- Is a sentence finished with a ‘by…’ at the end? The majority of passive sentences end with ‘by + noun phrase.’ This signal is not as conclusive as combining the two preceding indicators, but it may still be a decisive factor.
Step 2: Compare the sentence to the goal of your writing.
You may not be possible to eliminate all instances of passive voice from your essay, but it is critical to weigh all occurrences against the essay’s goal. Although not every passive voice will detract from the trustworthiness of your writing, some will.
- Is the action’s perpetrator named? Is it critical that the actor’s name be mentioned?
- Due to the lack of a doer, will the reader need you to explain the sentence?
- Is the passive voice the consequence of attempting to describe a narrative or historical period? Have you ever used it to describe something?
- Is the passive voice a consequence of a desire to draw attention to the object?
You’ll either have to go on to the next phase or leave your passive sentences alone, depending on the answers to these questions.
Step 3: If required, go from passive to active speech.
You should convert the statement to active voice if it makes sense. You may be wondering how to go from passive to active voice phrases. It’s fairly straightforward. All you have to do is change the order of the phrases. Change the object to the subject position, which means moving the receiver to the end of the sentence and the actor/doer to the beginning.
Is it possible to use a grammar checker to eliminate passive voice?
To examine my work for passive voice function, you may utilize a grammatical checker. While most grammar checks function well, others just indicate all instances of ‘to be’ verbs, which may not always transfer to passive voice. You can’t simply alter all passive voice with a single click. Before making any modifications, carefully assess the sentences. Perhaps it is preferable to contact reliable editing services, where you can have this task completed by people.
Understanding passive voice allows you to recognize it and avoid using it in your writing, particularly if it’s an academic work. Check your work for passive voice in the phrases in the three phases above before you finish it. You may also use a grammar checker, but be sure to analyze everything correctly.
The “passive voice checker” is a tool that helps writers avoid passive voice. Writers can use the tool to find sentences that contain passive voice. The tool also gives quick writing tips for avoiding passive voice.
Related Tags
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- how to avoid passive voice in scientific writing
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