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Active or passive—that is the question

University of Denver, Colorado, U.S.

Corresponding author: kmahrer@du.edu

The first 20% of the full text of this article appears below.

For the past two or three decades, technical writing experts have tried to remove the draconian dictum: All technical writing will be in passive voice! To remind you, in active voice, the subject (i.e., agent of action) does the verb (the action), typically to an object or for a goal. The passive voice reverses that sequence: (1) the subject expresses the action or goal of the action, (2) a form of to be precedes a past participle of the verb, and (3) the agent of the action appears (or is implied) after the verb in a by phrase, as in "The site will be investigated by us." My point in this column is to convince you that "We will investigate the site," the active voice, is preferable, given a choice.

Technical writing in the passive voice has been the decree of many managers and mentors. As neophytes we read and mimicked it, assuming it would garner us respect from the community. Falsely complementing this assumption, many misdirected teachers proclaimed that, "I and we have no place in formal writing." . . . [Full Text of this Article]