Difference between ACTIVE & PASSIVE VOICE (Posted by Nova English Campus)

“Her clothes were taken off and the bed was gone!”

This is how a 16-year-old brilliant boy changed an active voice sentence into passive. The sentence in task was: “She took off her clothes and went to bed”. The boy got the full marks too. Anyhow, we can’t blame him for it. His grammar teacher might have exercised him too hard on such sentences in the classroom.

Most of the schools forcefully train students to convert such sentences as “Open the door”, “I love you” etc into passive voice. It compells the students to make such ridiculous sentences as “He ordered that the door be opened” “Let the door be opened” and “You are loved by me” and so on.

Conventionally rigid teachers of English, especially in India, might argue that such passive sentences are grammatically correct (especially those who consider Wren&Martin as the Bible of English grammar!!). But don’t you feel that such sentences sound awkward, and almost never used by the well known English writers and fluent educated speakers? No doubt English language uses passive voice more frequently than any other language, but it doesn’t license the users to spoil the beauty and brevity of the language by twisting easy-to-understand sentences into clumsy chunks of words.

Here are some guidelines about the right use of Active/Passive voice:

1. When the subject doesn’t give real information, the native users of English use passive voice.

E.g., English is spoken all over the world (passive voice).
People speak English all over the world (active voice).

In the second example, the subject ‘People’ doesn’t give any real information to the listener or reader. So the passive form (English is spoken all over the world) is the better option here although the active voice too sounds good and is widely used. In short, the passive voice helps to drop the meaningless active subject.

2. When the subject is unimportant/unknown or you are not interested in who or what does/did it, use the passive voice.

E.g., This road was laid in 1920. (We are not interested in who the contractor was!)

He was killed in the war. (We don’t know which enemy soldier killed him!)

Jack was fined for rash driving. (Definitely we know that the police fined him!)

The results have not yet been announced. (We don’t care who the hell is going to announce it!)

I was born in 1999. (Any doubt who gave me birth…?)

3. However, there are certain contexts in which you have to switch between active and passive voices.

For example: if you are talking about ‘Edison’ you should say, “Edison invented the electric bulb.” (‘Edison’ is highlighted). But when your topic of discussion is ‘electric bulb’ you would say: “Electric bulb was invented by Edison”. (‘Electric bulb’ is highlighted).

4. When the speaker’s thoughts, feelings, attitudes, desires, likes and dislikes are all important, active voice is the best choice.

E.g.,
I like mangoes. [ ]
I hate tea in the morning. [ ]
I can’t think of a better solution. [ ]
I love you dear. [ ]

If someone says, “Mangoes are liked by me”, “Tea is hated by me in the morning”, “You are loved by me dear” etc., I strongly feel that s/he must be hanged for murdering the English language!

To sum up, all the sentences cannot be turned into the passive, even if they contain objects. Some are best left in the active (I like mangoes); some in the passive (Pyramids were built thousands of years ago) and only some can meaningfully undergo active-passive transformation (Edison invented electric bulb / Electric bulb was invented by Edison).

With regards
Jacob (Nova English Campus, Amritsar)