Active vs. Passive Voice: What’s The Difference?
An active sentence like “I drank two cups of coffee” has the subject first (the person or thing that does the verb), followed by the verb, and finally the object (the person or thing that the action happens to).
So, in this example, the subject is ‘I’, the verb is ‘drank’ and the object is ‘two cups of coffee.’
But, we don’t always need to make sentences this way. We might want to put the object first, or perhaps we don’t want to say who did something. This can happen for many reasons (see the explanation further down the page). In this case, we can use a passive, which puts the object first: Two cups of coffee were drunk (we can add ‘by me’ if we want, but it isn’t necessary).
How to make the Passive in English?
We make the passive by putting the verb ‘to be’ into whatever tense we need and then adding the past participle. For regular verbs, we make the past participle by adding ‘ed’ to the infinitive. So play becomes played.
Active and Passive Voice Comparison
As you read through the following example sentences, you’ll start to become an active voice expert.
In summary, both the active and passive voices can be appropriate choices in scientific/academic writing. It is important to consider what you are trying to emphasize in a particular sentence or section of your paper.
It is easy to default to the passive voice in academic writing, and sometimes it really is the better choice. If you are undecided, try rephrasing the sentence in the active voice and asking yourself whether it changes the meaning of your sentence or simply makes your writing clearer or more concise.
