Trouble can arise, however, when you use the passive voice on a sustained basis without an overriding reason to do so. And it is easy to do this, since written material full of passive verbs often sounds impressive. Perhaps because of the use of the passive voice in technical writing, a sequence of passive verb forms can have the air of authority, but what it often has is air. Passive constructions are by their nature more wordy than active ones, forcing you to rely on abstract nouns and strings of prepositional phrases to convey the bulk of your meaning. As a result, your meaning can get diffused in bloated sentences, and your writing can become tedious to read and hard to understand. Consider this example which stresses the importance of supervisors:
Recognition and assessment of errors in quality control by the supervisors is required so that manufacturing procedures can be adjusted and the problems can be thereby eliminated.
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The complicated syntax required to accommodate the passive verbs causes confusion. Are the errors recognized by the supervisors or committed by them? The prepositional phrases leave us unsure. Here is the same material rewritten with active verbs. Notice how much shorter it is:
Supervisors must recognize and assess errors in quality control so that we can adjust manufacturing procedures to eliminate the problems.
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When you’re concentrating on the content and organization of your writing, it can be hard to tell if you’ve used too many passive constructions. A good test is to look down the page and circle (or make a note of) every form of the verb be (is, are, was, were, etc.) and any other weak verbs like seem, appear, and exist. If the page is covered with circles (or if you’ve grown tired of counting), you should consider rewriting the page using active verbs and the active voice.
