Should you ever use the passive voice?

A Write Now reader wrote to us to ask: is it ever acceptable to use the passive voice in ‘good writing’?

It’s a good question. You may be surprised to hear that the answer’s yes.

While it’s best to use the active voice in most cases, the passive voice can – on occasion – be useful. For example, if you had to reply to a customer or client who had made a mistake. You probably wouldn’t want to highlight this fact by pointing the finger, which writing in the active voice would do. For example:

You filled in the form incorrectly.

If you re-wrote this into the passive voice, it’s possible to be much more diplomatic, as you can take out the ‘doer’ (them) altogether:

The form was filled in incorrectly.

And sometimes the ‘who’ isn’t actually relevant. For example, if you were describing a property for sale, you might say:

The conservatory was added to the house in 1998.

That would be fine. The prospective buyers don’t really need to know that

Bob’s Conservatories of Hull added the conservatory to the house in 1998.

So there is a place for the passive voice. Just consider (as always) the needs of the reader before you choose.

And if you have any writing-related queries, why not pose them here in the blog? We’ll get back to you as soon as we can.

The definitive guide to transforming the writing of individuals and teams

GET YOUR FREE PDF COPY NOW

Author: Catie Holdridge

---

Catie joined Emphasis with an English literature and creative writing degree and a keen interest in what makes language work. Having researched, written, commissioned and edited dozens of articles for the Emphasis blog, she now knows more about the intricacies of effective professional writing than she ever thought possible.

She produced and co-wrote our online training programme, The Complete Business Writer, and these days oversees all the Emphasis marketing efforts. And she keeps office repartee at a suitably literary level.