Passive Voice: Avoiding Responsibility or Putting Focus Where It
Belongs?
Many writers regard passive voice as something invented by the
Devil himself. Evil, evil, evil. And, when used by writers to
avoid placing responsibility squarely on the shoulders of the
rightful subject of the sentence, passive voice is a pretty
heinous thing. For example:
The cigarette ads were designed to appeal to a younger,
hipper crowd, aged twelve to seventeen.
Well, who thought up that brilliant idea, eh? No one wants to
admit to it. And while the target demographics are pretty
important, in themselves, wouldn't it be more interesting to
know who's behind the nefarious ad campaign?
That might just lead to lawsuits. Those can be pretty
interesting, too.
The defendant, J. R. Renfield, was fined six million dollars
and ordered to produce a twelve-month series of public service
announcements designed to educate young viewers about the
dangers of smoking.
Maybe passive voice isn't so evil, after all. J. R. is the
rightful subject here, not the judge or jury.
Passive voice is constructed by combining a transitive verb (one
that takes an object) with an auxiliary verb ("to be"). For
example:
Active: Joe threw the ball. Passive: The ball was
thrown.
Well, we knew that - after all, the ball broke our plate glass
window. What we want to know is, who's going to pay to fix the
window?
Passive: The ball was thrown by Joe.
In this second example of passive construction, Joe gets
responsibility for throwing the ball, but he is no longer the
subject, or main focus, of the action. If the ball and the fact
that it was thrown at all is more important than Joe, it may be
more appropriate to use passive voice.
Consider the following:
The fire, which destroyed six city blocks and killed nine
firefighters, was caused by faulty electrical wiring.
Nine firefighters were killed, and six city blocks destroyed,
by fire caused by faulty electrical wiring.
Faulty electrical wiring caused the fire that killed nine
firefighters and destroyed six city blocks.
Which is more interesting and important: the fire, the cause of
the fire, or the death and destruction that resulted from the
fire? Put the focus where it belongs; make the most important
thing the subject of the sentence, even if it involves using the
passive voice. Just be sure that you're not avoiding an issue or
shielding the real actor from personal responsibility.