A good friend shared a series of… wait for it… grammar jokes with me recently. The series is called “Grammar Walks into a Bar.” It’s origins are unknown but it can be found Bar.com. Bob the mascot dog decided they must be incorporated into subsequent Bob posts, so here goes.

“A bar was walked into by the passive voice.”

Passive voice, let’s talk about it. Are you psyched?

What you’re probably expecting to hear (complete with finger wag) is: Don’t use passive voice ever. It’s boring, drone-like, cyborg, inhuman and basically illegal.

My thoughts? I tend to agree. And I promise if you’re doing unbelievable contortions to avoid the passive voice, you’re probably only making things more awkward. But, I’m also pretty certain the passive voice can’t kill you.

The whole thing about writing - clean, clear, concise writing - is that it’s pretty natural. If you’re tripping over your sentences and generally feel like a goober saying it out loud, it’s probably awkward and could stand a re-write. Go for flow.

Don’t let the whole passive versus active debacle mystify you. It’s about VOICE. We all have one. We all use ours, whether we’re consciously aware of it or not. Use yours actively. In other words, don’t be the subject that gets acted upon by the verb. Lead with your subjects and let them do what they do!

A “rule” to think about regarding active vs. passive voice: If a human or animal or machine performed the action, just say so. Use the good ol’ subject + verb combo and go from there. Let’s look at a progression from passive to active, to active with flair.

• “My homework was eaten by my dog.” Awkward. Are you being paid to report facts in the most boring way possible? If so, go for it. Likely not though, so let’s step it up.

• “My dog ate my homework.” Ok, now we’re getting to brass tacks. Subject + verb. Think about it in question form. Would you say, “What was eaten by the dog?” No, you’d ask, “What did the dog eat?” If you’re unsure, ask yourself in question form and go with your gut.

• “My damned dog ate my homework!” Spirited. You have feelings about said dog and homework. You busted through the bland facts. “What did your damned dog do now?” He ate my homework. Guh.

• “Fido, that sneaky bastard, snatched my homework right out from under my hand and ate it when I fell asleep at the table last night. I can’t even believe I’ll have to attempt to explain this to my teacher.” Now we’ve got the whole picture. We know the dog’s name is Fido, and that he’s is a mischievous punk. We can “see” the scene as it unfolded last night. We know the dog’s human has a tough and somewhat ridiculous task ahead of him. We chuckle at the pup, we laugh at the human’s expense, but we also feel some empathy because in some form or fashion, we can all relate.

Overall, we’ve got a played-out scenario (the ol’ dog-ate-my-homework bit), but we didn’t tune out instantly because it was well expressed. Uh-oh, passive voice alert, did you catch it? I’ll try again - the writer expressed it well, using active voice.

One common point of resistance against the active voice is that when you don’t necessarily know who or what the subject is, it can feel strange to use the active voice. That’s a fair point. But, you can often work around it. For example, “My car was stolen!” You might ask, how can I put the subject “on” anyone or thing if I don’t know who or what it is? Well, did an inanimate object steal your car? No. Did a little bird do it? No. It had opposable thumbs and wasn’t a monkey. “Somebody stole my car!”

Put on your Shakespearean hat for a moment and wonder aloud with me: “Hast not the passive voice value unto itself?!” It doth, friends. Don’t feel too bad for it. It may be the ugly duckling of writing, but it is a duckling nonetheless. Here are four advantages the passive voice has over the active. The passive voice wins out when:

1. There is no clear subject (and trying to invent one makes it awkward) or, mentioning the subject actually detracts from the point or clarity of the sentence. Here are two examples:

   • Up to 90% of the energy in light bulbs is wasted in the form of heat.

     • Yes, we the humans use lightbulbs, so we are technically the actors. But, assigning an actor to the sentence forces the use of the “royal we” and it doesn’t work quite as well in context to say, “We waste 90% of energy in the form of heat by using light bulbs.” The main idea of this sentence (the subject), is actually the light bulb - not humans as energy-wasters. Bottom line: don’t try to manipulate this sentence to work in active voice if the “doer” is big or vague (e.g., humanity) and doing so shifts the focus away from the true subject.

   • The first edition of Freud's earliest writings on dreams was published in 1899.

     • The verb we are working with is “published.” Well, who publishes? A publishing company. Is this sentence about the particular publishing company? No, the subject is actually "Freud’s early writings.” So does it really make sense to manipulate the sentence to reference the “Light House Publishing Company’s Boat Anchor Press?” No. No one really cares. (And yes, I made that publishing company up.) The point your’e trying to convey is made perfectly well as is, so leave the sentence be.

2. The performer is less important than the action. Huh? This happens all the time, especially in scientific writing. No one really cares which specific peon post-doc student heated the solution to 220 degrees for 15 minutes, or which lab tech titrated the solution that day. “The solution was heated to 220 degrees for 15 minutes and then titrated.” It’s all about the Benjamins - I mean the solutions - not about highlighting the performer.

3. The recipient is the main topic. Let’s look at an active voice sentence where the main topic is green plants: “Green plants produce carbohydrates in the presence of light and chlorophyll.” Cool, we’re talking about green plants and what they do. But, what if carbohydrates were actually the main topic of the sentence? Go ahead and re-read that first sentence. Would we want carbohydrates in the second position to green plants? No, because it makes it seem as though carbohydrates are just some by-product, not the main gig. So, let’s put the sentence in the passive voice with carbohydrates in the first position for clarity: “Carbohydrates are produced by green plants in the presence of light and chlorophyll.” Passive, but better.

4. You want to remain non-committal or “hedge” on a certain issue. This is my favorite use of the passive voice because it’s usually super obvious and sometimes funny.

   • Some of the most common examples come from kids. Do any of these sound familiar? “It broke.” “The milk spilled.” “It got dirty.” The common denominator here is that there is zero ownership. These occurrences happened magically. What do we wiser older adults inherently know? You dropped it and it broke. You spilled the milk. And you dirtied the thing.

   • Adults do it too. Think about it. You’re late to meet a friend for dinner. You snap into action, you put the pedal to the metal, and your brain is desperately filing through options for what to say when you get there. You know you don’t really have a good excuse and you don’t want to lie. “Hey, I’m sorry I’m late. Time just… got away from me.” Oh, did it now? So you had it in your possession and then you let it go?

   • You’ll find that this type of hedging is common in politics or third-party discussions of science or medicine. “It was concluded that Trump didn’t not obstruct justice.” (Yes, please pause and admire my double negative.) “It was apparent that the repair had failed and the space crew would need to find another solution.”

The passive voice is not evil. It has its uses. The general rule may be to avoid it, but as with anything, rules are meant to be broken. Life would otherwise be boring. So, break rules actively. And by that, I mean be aware of what you’re doing so that you’re making conscious choices to go passive. Stay active, but if you must go passive, actively go passive. Got it?

P.S. Bob thinks this joke is funny because the bar got quite a bruise from being walked into by the passive voice. Oh, pups.

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Reference: “The Value of the Passive Voice” on BiomedicalEditor.com retrieved at http://www.biomedicaleditor.com/passive-voice.html