I worked for 9 years at a university, and for much of that time, I edited a lot of content written by academics. Plus, I’ve edited graduate level work for students and have tutored undergraduate students in academic writing. Finally, I have edited dozens of online courses for accredited postsecondary institutions.
All this so I can say with full confidence that one of the habits most rampant in academic writing is the tendency to write in the passive voice.
What is the passive voice?
Passive voice occurs when a speaker turns the subject of a sentence into an object.
Consider these 2 sentences:
- My dinner was eaten by me.
- I ate my dinner.
Notice that the second sentence is the stronger of the two. That’s because a stronger relationship exists between the action verb and the subject.
Why should we avoid the passive voice?
Well, there are multiple reasons to avoid using the passive voice when we can. I outlined 9 reasons a few years ago. One specific reason is that it can lead to confusing wording. Consider this passive sentence I recently found in a document I edited for a client:
- The following were considered as industry’s expectations of future graduates were scrutinized.
Do you understand what it’s trying to communicate? If so, could you understand it immediately, or did it take some parsing?
Here is what I recommended as an alternative. See if it helps you better understand the meaning.
- The committee considered the following as they scrutinized industry’s expectations of future graduates.
Better, right? That’s because once you make the subject explicit, it’s easier to attach the action to it. Leaving out the subject makes who’s performing the action unclear and vague, and that can lead to confusing constructions, as seen in my example.
