The decision was made by the president.Active: The president made the decision.Įven if the performer of an action isn’t omitted, the passive voice often sounds weaker and less impactful because it typically shifts the focus away from the performer:.You’ll notice this difference in the following two sentences: (Five words)īecause the performer of an action cannot be omitted in a sentence that uses the active voice, the active voice often sounds more authoritative. You can see this is the following two sentences: Often, the active voice results in shorter, more direct sentences than the passive voice. That being said, there are specific instances where the active voice is particularly useful. Even in casual speech and writing, the active voice tends to come more naturally to most people. It is seen as more direct and often makes sentences easier to read or understand. Generally speaking, the active voice is the preferred voice in formal and academic writing. The rain poured, the thunder boomed, and the lightning crashed.The strict teacher ignored the wiley student’s attempts to get out of taking the test.The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.Fred, Daphne, and Wilma searched the spooky mansion.As you read each one, you’ll see that the subject of each sentence or clause is directly performing an action. Let’s look at a variety of sentences that use verbs in the active voice. Find out the details about action verbs here. Looking at it this way, you can see that a sentence like She hates broccoli uses the active voice while the sentence Broccoli is hated by her does not.ĭon’t confuse active voice with action verbs. However, the subject of each sentence is the one performing the action described by the verb. Let’s explain with some examples:īoth of the above sentences use stative verbs in the active voice. In this case, we consider whether or not the figurative action of the subject is targeted toward something else by the verb. In both sentences the subjects ( boy and babies) are the performers of the actions ( walked and are sleeping).Īlthough we don’t think of them as describing “actions,” stative verbs refer to emotions and opinions (such as like, belong, or doubt) can also be used in the active voice. For example, both of the following sentences use the active voice: Kicked is in the active voice.Īlso, as long as the subject is the one performing an action, intransitive verbs can use the active voice, too. A transitive verb is “a verb accompanied by a direct object and from which a passive can be formed.” For example, in the sentence Jenny kicked the ball, the ball is the direct object because it is the thing that Jenny kicked. Both transitive and intransitive verbs can use the active voice. We will explore the difference between the two voices more later. This is an example of a sentence that uses the other voice of verbs: the passive voice. Matt didn’t poke anything a chimpanzee poked him. If you look closely, you will see that the subject Matt is not performing the action described by the verb poked. For example, the sentence Matt was poked by a chimpanzee does not use a verb in the active voice. If the subject is receiving the action rather than performing the action, it is not using the active voice. There are no special rules when it comes to using verbs in the active voice: as long as the subject is actually the one performing the action of the verb, the verb is in the active voice.

This all sounds simple enough, right? We tend to use verbs in the active voice in so much of our writing and speech, so you should be pretty familiar with using it already. Rose is both the subject and the one who did the hugging. For example, the sentence Rose hugged her sister uses a verb in the active voice because the subject Rose is the one that performed the action described by the verb hugged. A verb is said to be in the active voice when the subject of a sentence or clause is the one performing the action described by the verb. The active voice is one of two “voices” of verbs that we use in writing and speech.

That being the case, it is only fair that we learn a little more about our very active friend and the best ways to use the active voice in our speech and writing. If you’ve been writing or speaking English for a while, you’ve probably been using the active voice most of the time without even knowing it. The active voice gets straight to the point and tells us who did what in both shorter sentences like I ran and longer ones like I carefully ran to the store in order to buy the last inflatable gorillas they had on sale. When we want to do this in grammar, we use the active voice. Sometimes, it’s best to take the direct approach.

Passive to active voice