Active vs. Passive Voice — How Does it Impact Readability?

Knowing when to use the active vs passive voice can significantly impact the readability of your content. 

Many readability tools and grammar checkers recommend limiting passive voice in writing, but why? What is it about the passive voice that makes content more difficult to read? Is an active voice always the better option?

Read on to learn more about the passive vs active voice, how they affect readability, and how to switch between the two so you can create the most effective content for your audience.

Key Takeaways (TL;DR)

• In the passive voice, the target of the action is the focus.
  • For example, “Brian was called by Alyssa.”
• With an active voice, the focus is on the sentence’s subject doing the action.
  • For example, “Alyssa called Brian.”
• You can think of active voice as the default way of writing to improve readability, but there are some situations where passive voice is appropriate.
• To convert text from passive to active voice or (active to passive), you can go through content manually or use an active-to-passive voice converter.

Passive vs. Active Voice: What’s the Difference?

While they can have the same meaning, the difference between passive and active sentences lies in their structure.

Passive voice

You use the passive voice when something occurs to a sentence’s subject. It follows this type of construction:

Passive voice = subject + auxiliary verb + main verb + target

Example:

The music is written by Charlie.

The music (subject) + is (auxiliary verb) + written (main verb, written in the past tense) + by + Charlie (target).

Note: As noted by Purdue University, ‘by’ often appears in passive voice but not always.

Is passive voice the same thing as past tense?

Passive voice isn’t the same as past tense. 

Past tense refers to when an action was performed, while passive voice focuses on who is performing the action. 

Example:

• “Charlie wrote the music” is past tense.
  • It refers to something that happened in the past. 
• However, it’s written in the active voice.
  • Charlie is the sentence’s subject and is performing the action.

Active voice

With the active voice, the subject is the person or thing doing something. Its structure looks more like this:

Active voice = subject + active verb + target

Example:

Charlie writes the music.

Charlie (subject) + writes (active verb) + the music (target).

The sentence's subject switches when you convert from the passive to active voice. While it may not seem like this should make a difference (after all, it doesn’t change the meaning of the sentence), this is key to improving the readability of your content.

Active vs. passive voice examples

Sometimes, one example just isn’t enough. Here are a few other active vs passive voice examples to help you distinguish between the two:

Active: Sally conducted a study on local librarians.

Passive: A study was conducted on local librarians by Sally.

Active: The person made a mistake.

Passive: Mistakes were made.

Passive: Troy likes computers.

Passive: Computers are liked by Troy.

Note that the passive sentences often use more words, don’t always include who is doing the action, and even sound a bit clunky compared to the active ones. They’re certainly not the more readable options.

How Does Active vs. Passive Voice Affect Readability?

While active vs. passive voice is an important part of checking grammar, it also impacts readability.

In most cases, using an active voice makes content more engaging and easier to read. It can even make it more concise by saying the same thing in fewer words. 

However, this doesn’t mean you should avoid passive sentences completely. There are some instances where a passive voice makes more sense.

When to use active voice to improve readability

It’s helpful to think of active voice as a “default” way of writing. Because of its benefits for readability, active voice is what you should aim for when you sit down to write a piece of content.

Use active voice to:

• Get the reader to focus on the subject and its action instead of its target.
• Sound more conversational, confident, and energetic.

Example:

Passive: The cat was chased around the room.

Active: The dog chased the cat around the room.

By focusing on the target (the cat) of the action (being chased), the first sentence is a little vague, leaving the reader to question who chased the cat. 

However, the second sentence introduces the subject (the dog) and answers that question immediately, giving the reader a clearer picture of what’s happening.

When to use passive voice to improve readability

While using the active voice is typically the clearest and easiest-to-understand option, there are some situations where using the passive voice makes sense.

Use the passive voice to:

• Get the reader to focus on the target, not the subject, of a sentence.
• Indicate that you don’t know or the reader doesn’t need to know the subject.
• Vary sentence structure.

Example:

News anchors may use passive sentences, like “A business was vandalized last night.” In this case, the news anchor is highlighting that a business was vandalized, not who did it. 

How to Change Passive Voice to Active Voice

When you’re in the zone and typing away, it’s easy for passive sentences to sneak in there and impact the readability of your content. Fortunately, you can often edit them out quite easily.

To manually convert passive voice to active voice in your content, follow these steps:

1. Look for sentences containing the passive voice.
2. Take the auxiliary verb out of the sentence.
3. Switch up the subject.

Example:

Passive voice: Patrick was called by Pete.

To change this into the active voice:

• Remove the auxiliary verb “was.”
• Make “Pete” the subject.

Pete called Patrick.

Done!

Now, as you can probably imagine, going through and changing everything manually can be time-consuming. If you prefer a simpler, time-saving approach, consider using an active-to-passive voice converter tool instead.

Simply plug some text into a converter and let it identify and change the sentences. With this task off your hands, you’ll have more time to focus on creating the kind of people-first content that resonates with readers and search engines.

Boost Readability With Proper Active vs. Passive Voice Use

While using the active voice is often a surefire way to improve the readability of your content, there are a few situations where the passive voice is more appropriate, if not necessary. By knowing the difference between active vs passive voice and how to convert one from the other, you can create more readable content for everyone to enjoy.