Why Active Voice Is the Better Voice for Academic Writing

This article discusses the single reason why you should write in the active voice: it makes individual sentence ideas straightforward to combine into paragraphs.

Sentences 1 and 2 are written in the active and in the passive voice, respectively:

1. “we observe transformation X at condition Y“, and
2. “transformation X is observed at condition Y”.

As these two examples show, a sentence written in the active voice doesn’t sound any better or worse than one written in the passive voice.

So What Makes the Active Voice Better?

The direction of the verb action. By definition:

a sentence in the active (passive) voice has its subject (object) perform the verb action onto the object (subject).

The subject-on-object direction of the active voice makes any constituent of a sentence easy to focus on in the next sentence—it’s the key feature that directly helps the writing process.

The object-on-subject direction of the passive voice has the opposite effect; it makes sentence ideas difficult to connect into paragraphs.

The Problem with Using the Passive Voice

Consider the following example (Sanger, 1977):

①A new method for determining nucleotide sequences in DNA is described. ②It is similar to the “plus and minus” method [Sanger, F. & Coulson, A. R. (1975) J. Mol. Biol. 94, 441-448] but ③makes use of the 2′,3′-dideoxy and arabinonucleoside analogues of the normal deoxynucleoside triphosphates, ④which act as specific chain-terminating inhibitors of DNA polymerase. ⑤The technique has been applied to the DNA of bacteriophage ϕX174 and ⑥is more rapid and more accurate than either the plus or the minus method.

In this abstract, the authors made six statements (circled numbers) using both impersonal active-voice and passive-voice verbs. The purpose was to make the text sound objective by avoiding the personal pronouns “we.”

Sentence ① showcases the effects of the passive voice. The sentence:

• requires readers’ attention just to figure out who does what to whom,
• makes the next sentence difficult to write (see awkwardness of sentence ②③④), and
• doesn’t show obvious objectivity.

All these negative effects could be avoided if the authors used the active voice from the start.

Rewriting Using the Active Voice

The active voice is great at combining loose ideas into single succinct statements. From the original abstract, I group the six ideas into relevant sets. Doing so, it becomes clear that:

• ①, ②, and ⑥ summarize the article by comparing the new method to the previous one,
• ③ and ④ state the key strategy/technical advance, and
• ⑤ describes the experiment used to demonstrate the above.

From here, I combine each set of ideas using a descriptive active verb to make a single statement. I rewrite single ideas in the active voice. I get the following active-voice version:

①We present a new DNA nucleotide sequencing method ⑥with greater speed and accuracy than ②the current “plus and minus” method [Sanger, F. & Coulson, A. R. (1975) J. Mol. Biol. 94, 441-448]. ③Our method uses 2′,3′-dideoxy and arabinonucleoside analogues of the normal deoxynucleoside triphosphates ④as specific chain-terminating inhibitors of DNA polymerase. ⑤We demonstrate this method by sequencing the DNA of bacteriophage ϕX174.

Note that in the rewrite:

• sentence ① points out the essence of the work as a “new method”;
• sentences ③ and ⑤ are then connected to ① using the word “method”.

These connections are facilitated using the active voice.

What Made the Active Voice Work?

Timing; when to use the active voice matters. My advice is:

use the active voice at the very beginning of the writing process to group your ideas into relevant sets.

Using the active voice at this stage will help you:

• sort out your ideas’ importance relative to each other, and
• formulate the logic sequence of your ideas.

After formulating your logic sequence using the active voice, you will have an easier time switching to the passive voice if needed.

Starting the writing process using the passive voice instead will likely result in an abstract that’s as difficult to read as the original.

Conclusions

While sentences in the active voice do not sound any better or worse than their passive-voice counterparts, writing in the active voice expedites the writing process, by making your sentence ideas straightforward to combine into paragraphs.

Works Consulted

Sanger, F., et al. “DNA Sequencing with Chain-Terminating Inhibitors.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, vol. 74, no. 12, Dec. 1977, pp. 5463–67.