I’m a firm believer that people don’t need to know the technicalities of grammar to be good at writing. If you can talk, you can write.

But.

If we want to sound both professional and human in our business communications, then one of the things I think we should all know is the difference between active and passive sentences.

Here’s why. And how.

Knowing the difference between active and passive will rock your business world

We know what it means to be active – Get your ass off the couch. Go for a run.

We know what it means to be passive – Life is hard. I’m staying on this couch until the universe brings me good things. Poor me.

The concept is similar in writing sentences. The active sounds good. The passive is icky.

If you want your business writing to sound good, read on.

Get shit done. Don’t wait for it to happen.

Ultimately most sentences fall into 1 of 3 categories.

So just to recap - write about people doing things. Not about things being done.

(A bunch more useful but way less entertaining examples here.)

Academia’s got a lot to answer for

So why do we use that passive voice?

We can squarely lay the blame with universities. And lawyers.

And anyone older than you in your business who’s been around longer and thinks they know stuff and you should do as they do. And anyone who subscribes to the “It’s always been done this way” school of thought.

The academic voice has always been respected, and so traditionally as professionals, we adopted it so that we, too, would be respected.

The only problem with this is that the academic voice traditionally removes the personal, the human, the individual voice.

But to be successful in business, we rely on good relationships.

And relationships involve humans. People. Individuals – even when those individuals represent a company.

So we’re redefining ‘professional’

Professional writing once meant formal writing. They were one and the same. This is ABSOLUTELY NO LONGER TRUE.

I can’t even say that loudly enough.

Formal writing, the academic voice, the passive voice, creates all kinds of problems (see below).

To be professional in our writing today, we need to be:

clear, easy to understand
concise, to the point
personal – to establish and maintain good relationships
transparent and accountable

Problems with the passive

I don’t really want to labour the point, but if you’re still not sold on this whole active voice thing, here are the main problems with the passive voice.

It uses more words (Complete the form v The form should be completed)
It’s a learned voice, so it’s not natural to us. It’s hard work. (I’m going to town v Town will be gone to by me. WTF?)
No one is accountable (Mistakes were made. It was observed.)
It’s often ambiguous, requires your reader to make assumptions, and can be wide open to interpretation (Again: Mistakes were made. It was observed)
You sound like a dick (Read this. Or this. Or if you’re really a sucker for punishment, all of these.)

Benefits of the active

On the other hand, the active voice does all kinds of great things for you!

It’s shorter and more concise
It’s more specific (less ambiguity)
It’s shown to engender confidence and trust
You sound human. What a novel idea.

But I’ve told you all this before.

Is it ever ok to use the passive voice?

Absolutely - we just don't want it to be our default voice.

So use the passive voice as an exception, purposefully, when:

you don’t know the WHO (The vehicle was damaged)
you’re protecting yourself or someone else (The vehicle was damaged)
the THING (object in the sentence) is what you want to focus on, not the action or the person responsible (The vehicle was damaged)

The zombie test

Who doesn’t love zombies?

And who knew they could help with grammar?

IF you want to know a cool trick to text for passive sentences, try this:

If you can add “by zombies” onto the end of a sentence, it’s passive.

It was recommended (by zombies).

Mistakes were made (by zombies).

The form must be completed (by zombies).

For more cool zombie-grammar stuff, read here.

Who ate the bacon?

And just for a final smile, here’s an old favourite to help us remember active and passive (Gotta love Grammarly):

A note to the grammar police

You’re probably thinking, 'She’s way oversimplifying this.'

And you’d be right. If you know that, then

a) this post is not for you, and

b) reread my opening line.

Nothing to see here. These are not the droids you’re looking for. As you were.