Weak verbs proliferate when writers become addicted to the passive voice. Passive constructions use the object of an action as the subject of a sentence. They therefore emphasize actions in themselves rather than the agents responsible for the actions. There are appropriate uses for this perspective--for instance, in scientific writing, where one often wants to describe processes that lack an obvious agent.
Since the passive voice lets you avoid specificity, you should be aware of what you are not specifying. Sometimes writers use the passive voice as a way of obscuring important issues or avoiding responsibility. Compare these two presidential pronouncements:
Mistakes were made.
The buck stops here.
In the first sentence, virtually a textbook example of the passive voice, the speaker attempts to limit damage from a political scandal by neglecting to identify the parties responsible for the "mistakes." In the second sentence, which is clear, direct, and active, the speaker declares his responsibility. Sentences in the passive voice do not inherently lead to deceitfulness, but it is much more difficult to evade hard truths when you write in the active voice. Avoid passive constructions whenever possible, since they are often vague. For example:
Public television can be perceived by some as boring. When its programs are viewed, they seem tedious and cannot be easily understood. The interest of a wide audience is not attracted. This narrowness of appeal is imputed to excessive intellectualism. How can this be supported by a so-called "public" network?
These unfortunate sentences should be rewritten: "Many viewers find public television boring because it is too intellectual, a questionable quality in a 'public' network." Most of us have a natural desire to avoid straightforward assertions like this because they bring on us the burden of controversy. Good writers distinguish themselves by their willingness to accept that burden.
Despite its dangers, there are appropriate uses for the passive voice. For instance, when the agent is irrelevant ("This seat is occupied") or unknown ("The child was injured in the riot"), avoiding the passive voice may be clumsier and less accurate ("Someone is sitting here already"; "A policeman, a rioter, a random brick, or an unexpected heart attack injured the child in the riot"). Scientific and other technical writing admits a greater use of the passive voice. While the phrase, "Total energy is wasted in the form of heat," might be recast as, "Some agency which is not yet identified wastes total energy in the form of heat," the second is graceless and borders on superstition. Much scientific writing adopts the passive perspective even when the actors are clearly known ("The concentration of sodium is observed to increase when a charge is applied") as an unstated way of emphasizing that the actions or observations discussed are in some sense universal: the same phenomena will be reported by all observers. Finally, even in relation to facts and observations reported by specific individuals, technical writers often choose the passive voice as a means of summarizing a body of knowledge with which they assume their intended audience is already familiar ("It can be shown that the total energy of a dissipative system decreases [Lord Kelvin, 1886]").
For further help in avoiding unnecessary uses of the passive voice, consult Richard Lanham's Paramedic Method.
Copyright 1996 Yale University. Revised on Monday, May 20, 1996