Be Passive Aggressive

You might think that after learning to prefer active verbs, the lesson is simple: always use active, never use passive. That's a reasonable conclusion to draw — it's almost exactly what the last lesson argued. But it goes one step too far. Active voice is the right default, not an absolute rule. There are two real situations where passive voice isn't a mistake at all — it's the better tool for the job. Learning to spot those two situations is what turns "avoid passive" from a rule you follow blindly into a choice you make on purpose.

A quick reminder

• Active verb: the subject performs the action. The dog bit the mailman.
• Passive verb: the subject receives the action. The mailman was bitten by the dog.
• Linking verb ("to be"): connects a subject to a description, with no action at all. The mailman was frightened.

Case 1: spotlighting the victim

Sometimes a sentence isn't really about who did something — it's about who something happened to. In that case, passive voice puts the right character in the spotlight.

A car hit the child.

vs.

The child was hit by a car.

Both sentences are grammatically correct, and both contain the same facts. But if you're writing about the child's recovery, the second version is the better choice — "the child" opens the sentence, exactly where a reader's attention and sympathy belong. The car, almost incidental to the real story, gets pushed to the end. Active voice would have made the car the star of the sentence. Passive voice makes the child the star instead.

Case 2: when the actor is unknown or beside the point

Sometimes passive voice isn't about choosing an emphasis — it's about the fact that there's no good actor to name at all.

The main system is paused, and customers are having trouble.

Here, "is paused" doesn't tell us who paused the system — maybe nobody knows yet, or maybe it doesn't matter in this sentence, because the sentence's real job is describing the effect, not assigning blame. Forcing this into active voice would require inventing a vague stand-in subject just to satisfy the grammar — "Someone paused the main system" — and "someone" doesn't actually give the reader any real information. Passive voice lets the sentence skip a step that has nothing useful to add.

Where this idea comes from

This isn't just a modern writing trick — it has a long history in fields where naming the actor can be legally or ethically risky. News reporting is a good example. Before a suspect has been formally charged or convicted, responsible reporting often avoids stating outright that a specific person "did" something, since that person hasn't been proven guilty yet. A sentence like "The store was robbed last night" reports what happened without accusing anyone by name, while "Someone we haven't confirmed robbed the store" would be clumsy, and naming an unconfirmed suspect directly could be defamatory if they turn out to be innocent. Over time, this kind of careful, deliberate passive voice became a standard tool anywhere a writer needs to describe an event without prematurely assigning responsibility.

The rule, stated simply

Default to active voice. But reach for passive voice on purpose in two situations: when the sentence is really about the person or thing receiving the action, not the one performing it, or when the actor is genuinely unknown, unconfirmed, or beside the point. Passive voice used this way isn't weak writing — it's precise writing.

Exercise

For each situation below, write one sentence in passive voice that fits the situation, and explain in one line which case (1 or 2) it demonstrates.

1. A patient was treated after a minor accident, but no one yet knows who caused it.
2. A student won an award, and the sentence should focus on the student's achievement, not the committee that voted.
3. A package went missing somewhere between the warehouse and the customer's door, and nobody currently knows where.

Source: Tool #4 from Writing Tools by Roy Peter Clark.