Passively active: The strange power of passivity - Part 1

'When you can, write in an active voice.’

This is the maxim students hear when learning the English language. Active gives voice, opinion, bears all. It avoids verbosity and takes away the clunkiness that business reports, essays or narrative writing naturally inhabit.

Enerst Hemingway, the esteemed American writer, infamous for his brutally reductionist story telling, was not a fan of passive voice. Flip through any of his writing and you’ll notice that description, grammar and emotion is kept to the bare minimum. For example, in The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway’s description, ‘It was a fine morning’, says almost nothing and everything at the same time; the minimalist phrase lets the reader insert their own experiences of what a ‘fine morning’ is to them without having to imagine what it is is for the character. The same with the active voice; it economises description but says a lot more, in a lot less.

But what if passive voice is more useful and more cunning than we initially realise?

Firstly, it depends on your audience. Secondly, it’s about what you want to say, and how you want to say it.

Active: You must make some improvements.

Passive: Some improvements are needed to be made by you.

The convoluted passive statement sounds awkward, even cumbersome compared to the active statement. Yet, in some ways, using passive voice is a lesson in being tactful - and I’m sure we can all improve on that. Let’s have a look:

“You made a mistake.”

It’s direct, plain and simple, and in some cases a little tactless. Let’s imagine you’re giving an annual performance review to one of your colleagues. Your colleague made a mistake somewhere down the line and you have to inform them without causing offence or embarrassment, but at the same time have to let them know they can’t afford this mistake again.

*Part 2 in the link below