Passive voice: when it's actually correct (with examples)

Quick answer. The passive voice puts the receiver of an action first and often hides the doer: "The letter was written" rather than "She wrote the letter." It is not a mistake — it is a tool. Passive is the right choice when the doer is unknown, obvious, unimportant, or better left unnamed, or when you want to keep the focus on the thing being acted on. The craft failure is not using passive; it is using it by accident, or using it to dodge responsibility.

Key takeaways

• Active: The editor cut the chapter. — doer first, clear, direct.
• Passive: The chapter was cut. — the thing acted on comes first; the doer can be named in a by-phrase or dropped entirely.
• Passive is a shift in emphasis, not a grammatical error. "Avoid passive voice" is a guideline, not a rule.
• Use passive on purpose when the doer is unknown (the vase was broken overnight), obvious (the thief was arrested), unimportant (the form was signed), or deliberately unnamed (mistakes were made).
• The real problems are hiding responsibility, burying the actor the reader needs, and piling up clauses until the sentence sags.
• Test each passive: can you name the doer without losing what matters? If yes, active is usually tighter. If no, passive is earning its place.

Active vs passive, side by side

The two sentences carry the same event; only the spotlight moves. Choosing between them is choosing what the reader should look at first.

When passive is the correct choice

1. The doer is unknown or unknowable. The window was shattered sometime before dawn. No one knows by whom — active would force a fake or vague subject ("Someone shattered the window"), which adds nothing.

2. The doer is obvious or irrelevant. He was arrested. The law was passed. The reader does not need "by the officer" or "by the assembly" — the point is the event, not the actor.

3. The receiver is the topic of the sentence around it. The novel was rejected by six houses before it found a home. The paragraph is about the novel; keeping it as the subject keeps the through-line unbroken. This is the given → new move: start with what the reader already knows.

4. You need a neutral or objective register. Scientific, legal and technical writing uses passive to keep the focus on the method or result, not the researcher: The samples were stored at 4 °C. "We stored the samples" is fine in a memoir, odd in a procedure.

5. You want to avoid naming a person at all. It has been decided that the launch will move. Sometimes the doer genuinely does not matter, or naming them serves no one. (See the warning below — this is the use that shades into evasion.)

When it goes wrong — the three real faults

• Hiding responsibility. Mistakes were made. Passive with the doer deleted can be ethically empty: it removes the person who did the thing. In persuasive or accountable writing, name the actor. "Mistakes were made" is the textbook dodge.
• Burying the actor the reader needs. The report was reviewed before the deadline was missed. Who reviewed it? The sentence keeps its actor offstage and makes the reader work. If the doer is the point, active it.
• Stacking passives until the sentence sags. The proposal was drafted, was revised, and was finally approved by the committee after it had been delayed. Three was + participles in a row reads as fog. Recast: The committee revised the proposal, then approved it after a delay.

A related tell: watch for nominalisations — the implementation of the decision was undertaken instead of we decided and acted. They often travel with passive and inflate the sentence.

A fast self-edit pass for voice

1. Find every form of "be" + past participle (was written, is given, were reviewed). Each is a candidate passive — some are just adjectives (the door was closed can be a state, not an action).
2. Ask: is the doer needed? If the reader needs to know who acted, put the doer first and make it active.
3. If the doer is unknown, obvious or irrelevant, keep the passive — and delete any by-phrase that only restates the obvious.
4. Hunt the dodge. In any sentence about fault, error or blame, check that the actor is not hiding behind a deleted doer.
5. Unstack. If two or three passives sit in one sentence, rebuild it so one action leads to the next.
6. Read aloud. Active voice usually has more rhythm; passive usually feels heavier. Sometimes heavy is exactly the pace you want — but know that you chose it.

Voice is a line-level decision that a good editor makes sentence by sentence, not a blanket ban a tool can apply. If your manuscript is finished and you want that read — passive used on purpose, dodges caught — our editing and proofreading service is where it happens.

Related guides

Keep going: how to write a book, the types of book editing, book editing services and proofreading services. For a dictionary definition, see passive voice (Cambridge Dictionary).

Disclosure: Harmony Publishing is a self-publishing company and links to its own services where they match a step. The language guidance here is practical, not a rule for every style guide.