When writing a sentence, you need to make sure to stay in a consistent voice throughout.  While sudden shifts are acceptable, they can only be used if there’s good reason for it.

Just in case you need a refresher, the voice of a sentence is defined by its verb, which is either active or passive.  Staying consistent simply means that if you use an active verb  at the beginning of a sentence, then you only use active verbs until its end.

Take this sentence as an example: “He rescued a dog, took it home and put it up in the garage.”  Here, the sentence stays in an active voice throughout.  A variation that shifts will be: “He rescued a dog, took it home and had it sleep in the garage.”  As you can see, the sentence is perfectly acceptable, but there’s an awkwardness about it.  Plus, the shift isn’t necessary, as the other way of constructing the sentence works just fine.

More importantly, disciplining yourself to stick to one voice should help you avoid the unnecessary awkwardness that frequent shifts can create.  Some writers, for instance, completely ignore voice that they end up shifting from one to the other multiple times within the same sentence.   While the result often stays readable, they don’t make for the smoothest reading.

We all know about active verbs and how they make for more vibrant sentences.  However, passive constructions exist for a reason, too — they are very useful in a variety of situations.  For business writing, in particular, it will serve you well to know when to put them to good use.

Passive sentences put the focus on the object of the verb, rather than the person performing the action.   As such, it will prove very useful when the actor carries less significance in the sentence compared to the object.  For instance, declaring that “This year’s profits are a substantial increase compared to our previous numbers” puts the emphasis on “this year’s profits,” rather than the company or whoever is responsible for those results.

The passive voice can also be used to relay negative information without directly placing the blame on anyone (since the object is the focus, rather than the actor).  When you write a report detailing the failure of a marketing plan, for instance, the passive voice can help you place the attention on the specific actions that caused the results, rather than the person responsible for them.  This way, the report won’t feel like an attack on whoever’s to blame (it’s more diplomatic)  — your superiors should be able to read between the lines about who actually caused everything, anyway.

While we still recommend avoiding the passive voice whenever possible, you have to pay attention to situations like the above.  They can prove really handy in those cases.

Using the passive voice is usually bad.  Conversely, employing the active voice is recommended for better writing.  Like all writing guidelines, though, there are exceptions to even the best practices.

There are quite a few cases where using the passive voice will not actually hurt your writing, even if your writing improvement checker does alert you to your use of them.  In fact, this particular grammatical construction will help you achieve your specific communication goals in these situations:

1. You want to facilitate a smoother connection between sentences.  Sometimes, using the active voice can break the flow of thought from the previous sentence (usually written in an active voice).   When you notice that it does, rewrite the sentence with a passive tone.
2. You want to emphasize the recipient of the action.  The passive voice allows you to put the focus on the receiver of the action, rather than the doer (a good practice when the receiver is more important than the actor).
3. You don’t want to place responsibility on anyone.  The active voice can sound indiscreet in some situations where discretion is valuable, such as when reporting the reasons why a project failed.   Employing the passive voice helps to soften the blow when pointing out blame.

The passive voice isn’t all that bad.  Used well, it can be very helpful at communicating the meaning you want to impart.  Provided, you know what exactly you’re looking to convey.

For technical writing projects, there’s actually, at least, one good reason  to resort to a passive construction.   It’s an extremely effective way to make your sentences emphasize results.

In many reports of a technical and professional nature, the focus of the communication often lie on the results you talk about, rather than the object of the actions.  As such, the actors take on less importance, compared to the actions they committed and the results they achieved.

Take this sentence, for instance: “The compound used in the explosives used by anti-government protestors has been identified.  It was replicated in the lab, using a mix of extinct dinosaur blood with the saliva  obtained from an orangutan and chicken hybrid.”

Because we decided to use passive voice in that passage, we were able to put emphasis on the results obtained in the lab.  Not doing so would have put more of the focus on the lab squints conducting the examination, rather than the results they managed to come up with.

As always, using a grammar correction software should be a part of your regular working process.  The passive construction may be fine, on occasion, but grammar errors definitely aren’t.

There’s a time and place to use the passive voice, despite your favorite grammar program regularly warning you about your use of them.  Most of the time, though, you’ll be best served by resorting to an active form of construction.  These two instances are sterling examples of such cases.

1. When writing instructions.  Instructions must focus on the action, while indicating the individual performing them.  As such, only active or imperative verbs should be used – never passive ones.  That’s because the passive tense usually omits the actor from the equation, making it impossible for the reader to figure out who should be tasked to do a specific action.  Active verbs make instructions clear and precise; passive ones turn them into vague and confusing remarks.
2. When the passive form makes you use “it” as a subject.  In legal and business documents, you’ll regularly see sentences written with an “it” as a subject, where the “it” refers to some seemingly inanimate entity.  Examples of such usage are “It has been agreed that…” and “It has come to our attention…”  While grammatically valid, it’s a construction that immediately makes things confusing.  A quick look at such sentences should show you rather straightforward ways of rewriting – do those instead.

Books upon books of writing advice and semester after semester of writing class have taught most of us one thing about the passive voice:  always replace them with the active form whenever possible.  It’s for good reason, too.

Passive voice is typically a feature of childish expression.  That’s because children tend to perceive of themselves as objects of action, rather than the subject.  As such, the age-old advice of applying the active form of verbs, rather than their passive versions.

Whenever we use the passive voice, we tend to feel like we’re doing something wrong.  While the active form does make sense most of the time, the passive form can be just as valid.  In fact, there’s no rule in the English language that says you have to use the passive form of verbs all the time.  Even your writing software, in fact, won’t fault you for it.

Truth is, the passive voice is just as valid a way of expressing your thoughts.  In some instances, in fact, it’s an even better pick than using the active form of verbs.

• Sentences that contain multiple active verbs usually require naming each of the agents of the verb.  That leads to convoluted text that reads very, very awkwardly.
• Some agents can be better emphasized when using the passive voice.
• Sentences that accuse someone indirectly are best written in passive form and is an essential technique in journalism.  There’s almost no way to be indirect with the active voice.