September 8, 2009
Passive Poison
When people read your words, have they lost your meaning by the end of the sentence? Worse yet, did they stop reading almost immediately because the prose was wishy-washy and boring? If so, your writing might be suffering from passive poison. No, it’s not the plague of mankind. And no, there is not a crime-busting super hero out there to stop this injustice. But, I hope to show in this post that it does create problems and avoiding passive construction can help you be smarter, better accepted by your audience and lose ten pounds (just wanted to make sure you were paying attention).
Suppose you were enrolled in a college-level English or novels course and were assigned to read “A Tale of Two Cities” and then write a paragraph summary of the book. After enjoying a wonderful read, imagine you turned in this to your unwitting professor:
“Dude, I just totally finished this most triumphant book, “A Tale”…of something. Honestly, man, I was so blown away I can’t even remember the whole title. Anyway, it’s about this totally babe-a-licious chick, Lucie Manette, and her dad, Dr. Manette, who was in this completely nasty prison for like forever. So Lucy meets this tripped out dude, Charles Darnay, and they hook up. Charles is a teacher but what no one really knows is that he comes from a family that has a lot of Benjamins, man. That sucks for him when he gets arrested, just for being from a rich family! Then this other brother, Sydney Carton, he’s like not a great guy, but anywho, he has a chance to totally move in on Lucie. Instead, he like completely sacrifices himself for her. The ending was really sad and I used up a whole box of Puffs reading it. But anyway, Madame Defarge…she won’t be knitting anymore and, well, I think Charles Dickens, like, rocks!”
Hmmm….
The problem with the example above is not only is it completely ridiculous (although it would be fun to turn something like this in and see what your teacher says!), it is also written in the manner we would use to describe something to a friend over lunch. The written voice, even in its most casual usages, is more formal and poetic. And, a strong written voice always makes you appear smarter and better educated. A worthy goal!
Passive voice is poison because it also mimics the way we speak. Passive voice runs rampant in almost everything I see. I have to wonder if our teachers thought they were doing us a favor. Looking out at their fresh faced students, perhaps they thought, The poor dears! They’ll grow up and have to write 1,000-word essays in college (gasp). I’ll teach them to write in the passive voice and that will just pad those awful papers with lots of extra words.
Passive construction is lazy. If we replace it with writing in a strong, active voice, we influence more readers because the writing appears more declarative. This is especially important for people who seek for new employment. Remember, you are often first presented to a hiring manager through your writing. Active writing says a lot with fewer words. In our fast-food-mentality culture, less is always more. I do envy Dickens sometimes and the freedom he had to use a lot of beautiful words to describe things.
The easiest way to spot passive construction it to look for a combination of a “be” verb (be, am, are, is, was, were, being, been) and a verb that ends in “ing”. Some examples:
Passive to active:
We will be starting our meeting at 8:00. The meeting starts at 8:00.
I have been working for XYX company. I work for XYZ company.
Are you planning on applying for that job? Do you plan to apply for that job?
See how this shortens, tightens and rids the wording of confusion? All I did was remove the “be” verb and the “ing” ending verb. Passive construction is often foggy to the reader as it sometimes seems as if the subject of the sentence is being acted on by the verb, where it should always be vice versa.
Unless you are writing to an audience of English professors or professional writers, no one is actually going to KNOW you are writing in an active manner. But, your prose will have more punch and you will sound more authoritative. Just watch for those “be” verbs in tandem with “ing” ending verbs.
Every sentence can’t be fixed, but you can reason it out and see if there is a better way. The active voice may seem a bit awkward it the beginning because we are so used to seeing and hearing passive construction. But try it and keep those readers reading.
Happy writing!
