Passive and active voice

Although we’re often taught to avoid the passive voice altogether, using it isn’t grammatically incorrect, and there are some instances when it actually makes sense. Active voice means that a sentence has a subject that acts upon its verb. Passive voice means that a subject is a recipient of a verb’s action.

You might choose to use passive voice when the reader doesn’t need to know the subject of the sentence.

• Passive: Bill Gates was born on October 28, 1955.
• Active: Mary Maxwell Gates gave birth to Bill Gates on October 28, 1955.

However, in PR, you should typically try to stick to the active voice because it’s more clear and direct. Here are some examples:

Passive voice:

• On The Bachelor this week, Kelsey’s champagne was stolen by Hannah Anne.
• Automation is predicted to be a leading cause of job loss in the U.S. in 2020.
• This grammatical report was compiled by surveying experts in the content space.

Active voice:

• On The Bachelor this week, Hannah Anne stole Kelsey’s champagne.
• Researchers from InkHouse’s content department predict automation will be a leading cause of job loss in the U.S. in 2020.
• The InkHouse content team compiled this report by surveying experts in the grammar space (aka Madeleine’s mom :) )

When writing this post, we referenced this blog post by our client, Grammarly.