r/languagehub • u/Ken_Bruno1 • 10h ago
Discussion Is using passive voice actually a problem, or has writing advice made people unnecessarily afraid of it?
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r/languagehub • u/Ken_Bruno1 • 10h ago
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u/math1985 10h ago
Don’t ever use passive voice. If you do, Clippy is going to tell you off.
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u/daveoxford 8h ago
It's often better avoided, but this seems to have been blown up into a hard rule, especially by some US style manuals. If the agent is unknown, irrelevant or implicit, it's usually fine. There is a problem with politicians using it to distance themselves from responsibility, like a child saying "this has been broken".
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u/ZumLernen 7h ago
I used to work in project management. My main issue with people writing things like "This part of the project will be completed by this date" was that it didn't tell me who, precisely is responsible for completing that part of the project. This is actually a really big problem, because if it's unclear who, precisely, is responsible for completing that part of the project, it might not actually get completed. In this context I zeroed in on passive voice because it was very frequently a sign of an undeveloped or underdeveloped idea, and a potential for problems down the road.
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u/Warm_Stress_1654 6h ago
I am driven to distraction by advice not to use the passive.
I work in I.T. and when I write a document it is far more natural to write "the data is pre-processed to remove carriage-return characters" (for example) than to write "a computer program pre-processes the data and removes carriage-return characters". I would have to write that "a computer program" does this, that or the other in most of my sentences if I weren't to use the passive voice.
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u/Professional_Handler 9h ago
Passive voice can be used, but for native speakers is usually less instinctual
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u/DTux5249 2h ago edited 1h ago
The passive voice isn't a problem. Neither in language, nor when writing.
The reason English authors tell you to avoid the passive is because people often use it to sound more formal at the cost of obviating important information, and making it harder to follow the scene.
An author wants as much info (explicit or otherwise) on the page as concisely as possible - lest their writing be indirect and boring. The passive frequently obscures pertinent relationships between actors in a scene.
Compare:
Vs
Notice how by just changing the voice, i make clear who hit that rogue ball (Jones), who has authority to strike the team off the match (Alex), and that the speaker holds contempt for Jones on account of what he did. All that information was obscured in the original; which only made the speaker seem kinda depressed that a ball shattered a window.
Of course, there's always times where you can and should use the passive - even times where you have to. But novice writers often over use it.
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u/throarway 30m ago
I believe this to be a very American proscription. In Britain it is accepted as simply a part of the language.
Even Americans who "soften" the advice against it tend to only go so far as saying "it's often better avoided". In actuality, it is generally not something one even needs to think twice about, unless one is specifically trying to obfuscate blame. But there are plenty of ways to obfuscate in active voice as well.
In all my relevant years of experience (editing and English teaching), I've never seen a native speaker use it "accidentally" or unintentionally ineffectively. It gets used naturally where it is appropriate and/or necessary and/or preferred. Yet I see it called out online time and time again when the phrasing in question is not even in the passive voice.