The Important bit – Why the passive voice ?
The passive form of words does the following things:
- The passive voice lets you emphasise the person or thing that is affected by the action
e.g. If we change the active sentence,
Germany beat England in the semi-finals.
to the passive,
England was beaten by Germany in the semi-finals
then we are making England the topic of the sentence, which you may wish to do if you are English !
- The passive voice makes it possible to concentrate on the process (the verb) rather than the people in involved.
If we take the example above ( England was beaten by Germany in the semi-finals.) , we tend to emphasise the verb ‘beaten’ which makes it seem more shocking or painful.
We can also use the passive voice without the agent for the following reasons:
- We don’t know who or what the agent is (ie the person or thing that did the actions).
- g. The wheel was developed in the Bronze age.
- In this case, we don’t know who developed the wheel, but we do know that is was developed and probably developed over time. If we did know exactly who developed it we might write it in the active:
- Dave developed the wheel in the Bronze age.
- In this case, we don’t know who developed the wheel, but we do know that is was developed and probably developed over time. If we did know exactly who developed it we might write it in the active:
- g. The wheel was developed in the Bronze age.
- We don’t want to mention the agent (the person or thing that did the action).
- E.g. Mr Hunt simply replied, ‘The trophy was broken.’
- This does not tell us who did the breaking of the trophy. We might write it like this because we don’t want to specify who did the breaking. Perhaps Mr. Hunt doesn’t want to admit that he broke the trophy, in which case it would be
- Mr Hunt said, ‘I broke the trophy.
- This does not tell us who did the breaking of the trophy. We might write it like this because we don’t want to specify who did the breaking. Perhaps Mr. Hunt doesn’t want to admit that he broke the trophy, in which case it would be
- E.g. Mr Hunt simply replied, ‘The trophy was broken.’
- We have already been introduced to the agent (the person doing the actions).
- g. The Persians were firing arrows at all of the Spartans. Leonides felt a pain in his shoulder and his friend told him he was hit.
- We could place ‘by an arrow’ at the end of the sentence however we do not need to as has already been introduced.
- g. The Persians were firing arrows at all of the Spartans. Leonides felt a pain in his shoulder and his friend told him he was hit.
The passive voice is used a lot in scientific writing as well report writing. In these pieces of writing it is not important to know who was doing the action as the focus is on what is done.
In describing an experiment we might say
The card was placed in front of the torch .
I doesn’t tell us who did it, but that’s fine because in a scientific experiment , that is not important. If we wrote in the active, we would have to include the person who did it :
We placed the card in front of the torch or Tarquin placed the card in front of the torch
Some other examples:
The plants were watered every day at 9am, 1pm and 3pm .
It was observed that the plants grew 3cm every day.