Comments on: Passive Voice: How To Avoid this Writing Pitfall

By: Martin Johncox

Martin Johncox — Sun, 27 Dec 2015 10:42:00 +0000

Good advice! I rarely use the passive voice and I weed it out of all my writing. But it sneaks in, like when you write “One witty English teacher pointed out that famous movie quotes would be ruined in passive voice.” You could more actively state “One witty English teacher pointed out the passive voice would ruin famous movie quotes.” I believe writing exclusively in active voice promotes shorter sentences. Also, you can recast sentences to put the subject first and keep proper emphasis. As in, “Three reasons typically justify the passive voice” instead of “typically passive voice is used for these three reasons.” Frequently, when you remove the passive voice, you must also choose an active verb, which also makes your writing, well, more active. I used no form of “to be” in the preceding sentences, for example. When you comb over your writing like this, you can also spot and remove unnecessary instances of “that.”

By: Naomi Tepper

Naomi Tepper — Tue, 27 Jan 2015 17:35:00 +0000

In reply to Danyal Zia. In most cases, blog posts should be written in 1st and 2nd person perspectives (i.e., I teach you something in this post) and primarily in active voice. A great way to lose your readers' interest would be to write a blog post entirely in passive voice.

By: Danyal Zia

Danyal Zia — Tue, 27 Jan 2015 13:47:00 +0000

Nice write-up! I like to know which voice is most suitable for blog writing? As I have seen the use of passive voice in a lot of blogs.