In defense of the passive voice.

Abstract

Writers of scientific articles are familiar with the advice to avoid using the passive voice. Prescriptivists argue that the passive leads to bloated, indirect, and even evasive writing, and they recommend that the active form be used instead. This article defends the passive voice against these charges and argues that this advice is misguided. The article begins with a summary of the passive construction and the diversity of its forms, many of which are not appreciated in discussions of the passive voice's purported flaws, and is then followed by a summary of why some prescriptivists criticize its use. Three motivations for the use of the passive voice based on findings from psycholinguistic research are then described: First, the passive form allows writers to maintain topic continuity and conform to the given-new principle of communication; 2nd, speakers use the passive voice to accommodate concepts that are accessible; and 3rd, passive sentences are not communicatively equivalent to actives, and therefore active sentence paraphrases will sometimes distort the writer's message. An additional problem with the advice to avoid passive sentences is that people have trouble correctly identifying them and tend to rely on superficial cues that often diagnose other irrelevant grammatical constructions. Just as rules against split infinitives, stranded prepositions, and the singular they have been abandoned, so too should the prohibition against the passive voice. Instead of shunning a perfectly grammatical and useful construction, writers should strive to generate prose that is clear and elegant, using all the linguistic tools at their disposal. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).