When is active voice used

In general, a sentence that opens with a concrete simple subject followed by an active verb will serve you well; the rest of the sentence can reveal the new and often necessarily wordy information. Two common circumstances follow where passive voice is too often used, even though active voice is completely practical:. Batteries, inductors, and capacitors provide electrical energy storage. In batteries, high internal resistance allows for. The following excerpt from a meteorology paper demonstrates how admirable and efficient the active voice can be.

This paragraph is especially impressive in that it explains the complex concept of vorticity through an analysis of the seemingly ordinary phenomenon of smoke rings. Note the consistent use of simple exact subjects followed by active descriptive verbs.

Figure 4 depicts a smoke ring in which the layers of a toroidal vortex ring are visible. The two grammatical voices are active and passive. Write with confidence. Grammarly will make sure your writing is clear and mistake-free. Get Grammarly. Sentences in the active voice have a strong, direct, and clear tone.

Here are some short and straightforward examples of active voice. All three sentences have a basic active voice construction: subject, verb, and object. The subject monkey performs the action described by adore. The subject the cashier performs the action described by counted. The subject the dog performs the action described by chased. The subjects are doing, doing, doing—they take action in their sentences. A sentence is in the passive voice , on the other hand, when the subject is acted on by the verb.

Doing this usually generates a preposition as well. That sounds much more complicated than it is—passive voice is actually quite easy to detect. For these examples of passive voice, we will transform the three active sentences above to illustrate the difference.

Bananas are adored by monkeys. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use. This handout will explain the difference between active and passive voice in writing.

It gives examples of both, and shows how to turn a passive sentence into an active one. Also, it explains how to decide when to choose passive voice instead of active. Active voice is used for most non-scientific writing. Using active voice for the majority of your sentences makes your meaning clear for readers, and keeps the sentences from becoming too complicated or wordy.