Why do most articles recommend using active voice rather than passive?
8 answers from our tutors
Best answer
Active voice makes the article seem more personal. The readers will feel as though the author/writer is talking directly to them which will make the reading more personal to the reader.
- DaniloTeaching English linguistics
It is a bad, bad advice that is proliferated by people who are not linguists and simply do not understand how language works. Passive voice serves a clear role in language, and when you need it, passive will be a better choice than active. The fact that it is not used as frequently as its counterpart, the active voice, doesn't say anything useful about language. On the contrary, it leads learners into thinking that the passive voice is an undesirable linguistic feature that somehow crept into language, without anyone needing it. Following this logic, one might just as well say that the progressive aspect is not as good as the non-progressive, or that the perfect tense is worse than the non-perfect, simply because they are not as frequently used in language as their counterparts. And one could apply the same logic on numerous other language constructions.
Hello Passive voice is used in some and specific situations. 1 emphasize action more the actor 2 exalt some results scientifically speaking new discovery e.g. 3 you don't want say who is responsible for a certain situation. So you focused on the happened rather than who was responsible for Best Regards
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It feels far more personal, like there's a direct connection between the author and read instead of a 'presentation.' It's far more engaging for me personally!
The active voice is typically regarded as being more direct and lucid, whereas the passive voice can result in sentences that are longer and less coherent. When your teaching it is recommended to use active voice.
When you use active voice, it is much clearer who and what you are talking about. If you say "this was done," that only tells us so much about what happened. We don't have any idea who did it. This is especially crucial to use in conversations in business and relationships. If you don't give direct feedback about how something could improve, you will not see very many results. The significant other or boss/coworker may not understand the real issue and how it affects you.
It's hard to tell what's meant without any context. I would guess it is about the simplicity - active voice is easier to understand and to write, and articles tend to be a little less formal then, say, academic works.
Which articles do you mean specifically? Active voice generally sounds more assertive and when you use you speak with more conviction. Passive voice is just a focus on what is recieving the action, rather than the action itself.
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