He replied: “When a man marries his mistress, a vacancy is created.” I remember a philandering politician was asked at his latest wedding whether he would now be a faithful husband. But when they talk about things that have gone wrong, they use words like “it was considered that…”, or “it was felt necessary….”, distancing themselves from the decision-making process through use of the passive voice. Notice that when politicians describe their successes, they say “We took swift action to deal with the situation”. It is the skilful use of the passive voice to evade accountability. Because of the way he has phrased his statement, we cannot tell. In the latter case, the politician leaves open the possibility that the mistakes were made by someone else and his regret could easily be about someone else’s error.

“I made mistakes and I’m sorry” is a very different statement from “mistakes were made and I regret them”. From the politicians’ point of view that is better than “I made mistakes” because it sets up uncertainty about what happened. The classic example is “mistakes were made”. People in the public eye, particularly politicians, sometimes use the passive voice to obfuscate, confuse and mislead. They do not just affect style and impact, they can also affect meaning. So the starting point for news writing is to favour the active voice – and to recognise the comparatively rare occasions when it will be better to use the passive.īut there is another reason to understand the use of the active and passive voices. The passive voice serves better in this case. This is because the overwhelmingly important subject of the story is the president, not the lion, and you want the president mentioned at the beginning of the story.

“A lion has eaten the president” is much less effective than “The president has been eaten by a lion”. But the passive voice is not all bad! Sometimes it is the right choice. It is the default way of writing an interesting story. So the active voice is a basic part of a journalist’s toolkit. The active voice works better – it is less wordy and it puts the human interest angle first. Passive voice: After several months of better trading conditions, the annual bonus to staff at the Fred Smith store group will be paid for the first time in four years.Īctive voice: Staff at Fred Smith stores will get their first annual bonus in four years, after the group reported better trading conditions. Here are two ways of writing the same story: There are exceptions, which we will come to later, but in the vast majority of cases, the active voice gives your story impact and vitality. They are both perfectly correct, grammatically, but the active voice is shorter, stronger and more direct. In the passive voice, something is being done. In the active voice, somebody is doing something. In the passive voice: This module was written by me. In the active voice: I wrote this module. And verbs have two “voices”: the active and the passive. Strong verbs are the best words for suggesting action: run, leap, hit, accuse, rescue, build, explore, kick, ride, catch, etc. One of the ways is by choosing the active voice. You want to capture that in your writing and seize the attention of your audience. Passive and active voice graphic by Anders Behrmann, Photo by Andrew Medhat on Unsplash

Active v passive voice