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Having said all that, I do include at least some passive verbs in longer documents, for the sake of variety, for the sake of clarity, and sometimes because it just seems to work well within the context of what I’m writing at the time.
You can also use passive verbs strategically. If you want to suggest objectivity or non-engagement, use passive verbs. An articulate writer at the Professional Training Company puts it this way, “The nature of scientific and technical report writing often requires using the passive voice. Professional reports emphasize results and the objects of actions. The actor (who produced the results or acted on the object) is less important. Without the passive construction, report writers would emphasize the wrong information….“
For most of my writing, I find 10% to 20% passive verbs works well. Feel free to find a range with which you’re comfortable, and work within it.
Practice
To help you learn by doing, I wrote the following practice document. It includes far too many passive verbs, as well as a few other writing sins we’ll discuss later. For now, read this short document a couple of times, but don’t worry about editing it yet.
Begin Practice Document 1
We will be holding a course called 3 Easy Ways to Power Up Your Writing. The course is from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m., Eastern Daylight Time, on Thursday, June 28.
3 Easy Ways to Power Up Your Writing is for anyone who wants to improve his or her writing. The course is a teleclass, so you will be taking part on the telephone.
A learning objective for this class is to know three easy techniques for making your writing better. You will be learning more about these techniques in the class.
The other learning objective is how to apply these techniques once you have learned them. It is not hard to apply the techniques once you learn about them.
The first technique is replacing passive verbs with active verbs. You do this by taking out words such as is, are, am, be and being. The technique is a good way to make your writing more lively.
The first assignment for the teleclass is to print out this document. You should double space the lines before you print it. The second assignment is to read it several times before the class. You do not need to make any changes or corrections before the class.
End of Practice Document 1.
Next: You’ll learn how to measure the before and after; I’ll show you a website that provides detailed information about passive verbs in your document. And, it’s as easy as copy-paste-and-click.
