- What is active voice and passive voice? Active and passive voice are the two grammatical voices in English, each with distinct structures and purposes.
- What is active voice? In active voice, the subject performs the action of the verb: “The dog chased the cat.”
- What is passive voice? In passive voice, the subject receives the action of the verb: “The cat was chased by the dog.”
- When should you use active voice versus passive voice? Use active voice for clarity and directness; use passive voice to emphasize the action or recipient or when the doer is unknown or irrelevant.
- How do you change from passive voice to active voice? To change passive voice to active voice, identify the true subject (doer) and make it the focus of the sentence, followed by the verb and object.
What is active voice and passive voice, and when do you use them? Take the sentence “I want ice cream now.” It’s clear and straightforward; you know immediately that the subject, “I,” wants an object, “ice cream.” Now recast this sentence, flipping it so the former object is in the subject’s position: “Ice cream is wanted by me now.” It isn’t just longer, but it’s also more detached and a little awkward.
Those two sentences are examples of active voice and passive voice. Although it’s commonly suggested to avoid passive voice in writing in favor of active voice, there are times when passive voice is the best choice. Most times, active voice is optimal.
Whether you’re crafting a compelling narrative, presenting scientific findings, or composing a business report, understanding how, when, and why to use active voice and passive voice is key to being an effective writer and speaker.
Here, we explore their definitions, provide examples, and offer guidelines on when to use each voice.
Table of contents
What is active voice and passive voice?
What’s the difference between active voice and passive voice?
Should you write in active voice or passive voice?
How to change active voice to passive voice
Active voice and passive voice examples
Active voice and passive voice FAQs
What is active voice and passive voice?
Active and passive are the two grammatical voices in English. Neither is inherently better than the other, but each is distinctly different and suited to certain types of writing.
Active voice is a grammatical structure in which the subject of the sentence performs the action of the verb, creating a direct and clear expression, such as “The cat ate the food.”
Passive voice occurs when the subject receives the action of the verb, often resulting in a more indirect construction, like “The food was eaten by the cat.”
While active voice typically makes writing more engaging and dynamic, passive voice can be useful for emphasizing the action or the recipient rather than the doer, depending on the context.
We’ll explore when you should use either voice later in this article, but first, let’s get more familiar with active voice and passive voice.
Active voice
In active voice sentences, the subject comes before the verb, and the object (if present) follows the verb. This structure creates—i.e., active voice—a direct, clear, and often more dynamic tone.
Here are some simple, direct examples of active voice:
Notice how the subject, dog, is performing the action, chase, on the target of the action, ball.
Here are three more examples of sentences in active voice:
No matter what verb you use, structuring your sentence so the subject performs the verb is writing in active voice.
Passive voice
In passive voice, the action’s target is the focus, and the subject receives the action of the verb. Or, to put it in passive voice, the subject is acted upon by some other grammatical element, performing the action of the verb. Additionally, every sentence in passive voice contains two verbs: a conjugated form of “to be” and the main verb’s past participle.
In passive voice, the action’s target, ball, is positioned first as the grammatical subject of the sentence, while the performer of the action (if mentioned at all) is introduced later in the sentence, usually with the preposition “by.” Additionally, there are two verbs in passive voice sentences: “is being” (a conjugated form of the “to be”) and the main verb’s past participle (“chased”).
Take a look at the examples used to showcase active voice, written here in passive voice:
Notice how the recipients of the actions—formerly the direct objects of the sentences, now the subjects—are the focus, and the sentences now contain a conjugated form of “to be” and the main verb’s past participle.
Sentences in passive voice are often longer than sentences in active voice simply because they have to include additional words like prepositions.
Take a look at this sentence in passive voice:
Summer break is [conjugated form of “to be”] loved [past participle of the main verb] by [preposition] my friends.
It takes seven words to communicate the message. If it were written in active voice, the same sentiment could be captured in five words: My friends loved summer break.
However, sentences written in passive voice don’t necessarily need a preposition. Take a look at the example sentences below:
What’s the difference between active voice and passive voice?
The primary difference between active voice and passive voice is their tone, emphasis, and sentence structure. Active voice presents a more direct and dynamic approach, clearly identifying who or what is performing an action. Passive voice offers a subtler tone, shifting the emphasis away from the doer and onto the action itself or its recipient.
Should you write in active voice or passive voice?
Both active voice and passive voice play an important role in writing, and when to use either depends on what you’re writing and the desired emphasis. It’s important to be intentional with your selection because the choice between active voice and passive voice can significantly impact the tone, emphasis, and clarity of your writing.
Advantages of Active Voice
Many perceive active voice as stronger and more engaging. It’s generally preferred for its conciseness and clarity, making it ideal for most writing situations where you want to emphasize who or what is performing an action. For example, in a business report, saying “The marketing team launched the new campaign” clearly identifies the subject and the action, allowing readers to quickly grasp who is responsible for the initiative.
Active voice is also the top choice for authors of opinion pieces; it makes them sound very sure of their positions. Regardless, you should use active voice when you want the reader to focus on the noun in your sentence that is performing the action described by the verb rather than on the action’s target or recipient. For most of the writing you do, like emails, blog posts, and many kinds of essays, active voice is a more effective way to communicate the ideas, themes, and facts you’re expressing.
Advantages of Passive Voice
In certain kinds of writing, though, passive voice is necessary. It’s best used when it’s more important to focus on the recipient of the action rather than the person who performed it. While often wordier, this nuanced approach can be particularly useful when the doer is unknown or irrelevant or when you want to maintain a more formal or objective tone.
For instance, passive voice is used in lab reports because it conveys scientific objectivity by minimizing the focus on the doer of the action. News anchors and crime reporters also frequently use passive voice; it allows them to come across as detached from the stories they’re reporting.
These are examples of good use of passive voice:
In these kinds of reports, passive voice emphasizes the action that occurred rather than the individual or group who committed the action, often because the perpetrator isn’t known or hasn’t yet been found guilty of the offense.
There are other kinds of writing where the action itself, rather than the doer of the action, is the primary focus. These include scientific and, in some cases, historical reports. These use passive voice to keep the reader’s focus on what has happened or is happening. Here are a few examples:
Notice how, in both of these sentences, the doer of the action isn’t mentioned. That’s because it’s either implied or irrelevant. In the first example, the scientist performing the experiment is the one who placed the rats in the maze. In the second, those conducting the inauguration ceremony aren’t relevant to what’s being expressed in the sentence.
When considering using passive voice, be mindful that it can create confusion about who performed the action. If this detail is important, you may want to reconsider.
How to change passive voice to active voice
It’s easy to change passive voice to active voice; start by identifying the noun acting and make it the subject of the sentence. It’s also easy to identify where you may need to change passive voice to active voice. To get clarity on which voice you should use throughout your writing, read your first draft aloud after you’ve finished it. Listen to how it sounds.
This practice will help you catch awkward sentences and unclear phrasing. Mark them as points to revise in your next draft. You’ll also hear where you used active voice and passive voice and how they shift your work’s tone. This is where you can identify sentences that will benefit from shifting from one voice to the other.
Let’s say you’ve detected a few awkward instances of passive voice in your argumentative essay, such as:
“More flexible scheduling options are deserved by students.”
and
“Significant amounts of tuition are paid to the university every year, and many feel the level of service being paid for by students is not being received.”
See how these sentences feel like they’re dancing around the topic rather than addressing it head-on? The writer isn’t making a particularly persuasive argument, but they can make their writing far more impactful by changing it to active voice.
To do this, sentence by sentence, identify who or what is performing the action and make that the subject when you rewrite it. In the first sentence, make “students” the subject since they’re performing the action.
The main verb in this sentence is “deserve,” and the target is “more flexible scheduling options,” which will become the direct object in your new sentence. Restructure it so that the subject directly performs the verb:
“Students deserve more flexible scheduling options.”
See how this version gets right to the point? It makes the writer sound more confident too, which is a priority in argumentative writing. Now let’s try changing the second sentence:
“Students pay significant amounts of tuition to the university every year, and many feel they aren’t receiving the level of service they’re paying for.”
As you can see from this compound sentence, you can write any kind of sentence in either voice as long as it has a transitive verb. Whether it’s a simple or complex sentence (or even compound-complex), you can dramatically alter your tone by simply reworking its structure.
If you aren’t sure whether a sentence is active or passive based on how it sounds, use the rules outlined above to identify both voices in your work. The biggest clue that you have a passive voice sentence will be a form of “to be” followed by a past participle (e.g., “was requested” or “will be missed”).
Not every passive voice sentence states who is performing the action, but if it does, you’ll see a preposition next to it (e.g., “by zombies” or “by my brother”).
You can use either voice when paraphrasing longer works. Sometimes, such as when paraphrasing a scientific article, you’ll need to use passive voice; in other cases, you might clarify the original text by paraphrasing in active voice.
Active voice and passive voice examples
Take a look at these examples of both active voice and passive voice in action:
Active: Is Ajani visiting us today?
Passive: Will we be visited by Ajani today?
As you see, questions can be written in either voice.
Other kinds of sentences, like exclamatory and imperative sentences, are often best written in active voice:
Active: Please remove your shoes before entering my house.
Passive: Shoes should be removed before entering my house.
Active: Lock the door!
Passive: Let the door be locked!
See how, with the first pair, passive voice makes the request feel more like a suggestion? In the second pair, passive voice makes the message sound stilted and formal rather than an urgent exclamation.
Now take a look at these two examples:
Active: I poured the solution into the beaker and heated it to 100℉.
Passive: The solution was poured into the beaker and heated to 100℉.
Active voice and passive voice FAQs
What are the rules of active voice and passive voice?
The rule of active voice states that the subject of the sentence performs the action of the verb, creating clear and direct sentences. The rule of passive voice indicates that the subject receives the action, often leading to a less direct structure where the doer may be omitted.
When should you use active voice vs. passive voice?
Use active voice in any sentence that focuses on the doer of the action. Unless the majority of your writing is scientific or reporting incidents involving unknown perpetrators, most of the sentences you write should be in active voice. Passive voice is meant for sentences in which you need to emphasize the target of an action or the action itself rather than who or what is performing the verb.
How do you change passive voice to active voice?
To change passive voice to active voice, determine who is actually performing the action in the sentence, then restructure the sentence so that the performer is the focus, clearly performing the verb upon the sentence’s direct object.
How do you change active voice to passive voice?
To change active voice to passive voice, identify the object of the active voice sentence, make it the subject of the new sentence, and use a form of “to be” followed by the past participle of the main verb, often including the original subject introduced by “by.”
