Transcript: For the fourth video of our Unpacking Common Writing Advice series, we will be getting a little grammatical today, so bear with me. Most of what we will be breaking down is about the placement of words in a sentence, and while they may sound boring to some (not to me because I’m built different) this piece of advice can be super confusing to people who aren’t able to visualize it. So what does the writing advice “use active voice” mean and how do we incorporate it into our writing? Well, stick around and I’ll teach you how to do just that.

Hi, I’m C. Sloan Lewis & Welcome to My Channel

This video is being recorded by me. Afterward, it will be edited by me. Doesn’t that sound a little weird? Instead, I should say, “I’m recording this video. Afterward, I’ll edit it.” Not only does it sound better, it’s a quicker, more direct way to get an idea across.

The whole purpose behind this piece of writing advice is to make your writing clearer, more engaging, and more direct. Plus, even if a reader doesn’t entirely know what’s wrong with your writing, using passive voice (the opposite of active voice) will ring that something is weird about this bell in their head.

So what exactly is active voice? Here’s where the grammar comes into play:

In a sentence, you have a subject and a verb at the very least, but for the sake of this aspect of writing, you also have an object that is being acted upon: the direct object.

If you were to put it in a simple equation: subject + verb + direct object = active sentence.

Let’s take a look at these two example sentences:

• Active: The author wrote the book.
• Passive: The book was written by the author.

First let’s label the verb: to write. Then, we have to figure out who or what is doing the writing. In this case, it’s the author. Therefore, the book is the direct object, it is being written or acted upon.

The first one is in the correct subject + verb + direct object = active sentence format, while the second has the direct object switched with the subject. To put it even more simply, you want your subject to always be before the verb.

While both of these sentences are technically grammatically correct (there’s no grammar rule they’re breaking), the first one is more direct and the second is longer with two extra words than necessary.

Well, isn’t this a little nitpicky? Sure, if it was just one or two sentences in your book that were structured this way, it wouldn’t really be a problem. But what if there were several on each page? That’s where passive voice can really start to hurt your writing and create a lot of distance between the reader and your story.

Every time you set out to write a story (or let’s be honest: revise), you need to make sure your writing is clear, engaging, and concise. Every word in every sentence in every paragraph needs to count. Writing ideas in passive voice not only sounds clunky and can be unclear to your reader but also adds unnecessary words.

Let’s take a look at another example:

• Passive: The mistake was noticed by the editor after the article had been published.
• Active: The editor noticed the mistake after publishing the article.

The first sentence is a wordy mess that leaves the reader confused at the end, while the second one gets straight to the point of what the writer is trying to say.

But like with all the advice I’ve covered so far in this series, there are always exceptions to the rules. For instance, sometimes you just have no idea who did the action and there is only a direct object and verb in your sentence. This can also be the case if no one cares who did the action, just that the action happened like with “The Mona Lisa was stolen in 1911.” We don’t care about the thief (or at least I don’t).

Or it could be a lead-in to an idea or a start to a mystery: “A mistake was made” or “He was murdered.”

Perhaps, you are just explaining some sort of circumstance: “The experiment was conducted under controlled conditions.”

For all of these examples, though, you might have noticed that none of them have a subject. If there is a subject (or at least an important one), you must make the sentence active to avoid the issues I stated earlier. Ask, “Who or what is doing the action?”

Besides looking for a subject, which can be hard to identify with just a quick glance, also look for to-be verbs “was,” “were,” “is,” “are,” “be” and a past participle verb like “written” or “noticed” following it. “He is pretty” isn’t passive, for instance.

Once you’re able to identify a passive sentence, fixing it is fairly straightforward. All you need to do is switch the subject to the start of the sentence and the direct object after the verb. There may be other parts of speech mixed in there, so just make sure it all makes sense before moving on to the next one.

Anyway, I hope that was helpful, especially because all the videos about this topic I could find were made for like elementary-aged kids, which I think is really limiting people in their ability to learn concepts at a younger age. But I digress! As always, if you have any questions or comments, leave them below. Like and subscribe if you enjoyed this video and want to see more, and I’ll see you next week! Tata!