As you draft your document, consider how you’ll keep your readers’ attention — and be aware of how your sentences can affect their willingness to keep reading. One of the easiest things you can do is to write your sentences in active voice. A sentence written in active voice specifies an actor — a person or thing — who carries out an action.

ActiveVoice

Juan took an exam.

The tornado leveled the town.

Carmelo Anthony scored the game-winning basket with 0.2 seconds remaining in overtime.

In contrast, a sentence written in passive voice indicates that something was done, but it does not necessarily specify who or what did it.

Passive Voice

The exam was taken by Juan.

The town was leveled.

The game-winning basket was scored with 0.2 seconds remaining in overtime.

In general, you’ll want to emphasize the actor, because sentences written in active voice are easier to understand and provide more information.

Passive voice, however, can be effective when active voice would require the inclusion of unnecessary information. For example, many scientific experiments are conducted by large teams of researchers. Few readers would want to know which members of the team carried out every task discussed in an article about the experiment. Rather than using active voice (for example, “Heather Landers, assisted by Sandy Chapman and Shaun Beaty, anesthetized the mice, and then Greta Steber and Justin Switzer examined their eyes for lesions”), you can use passive voice (“The mice were anesthetized, and their eyes were examined for lesions”). In this case, the sentence written in passive voice is clearer, easier to understand, and free of unnecessary information.

Passive voice is also useful if you wish to emphasize the recipient of the action, rather than the person or thing carrying out the action. Police reports, for example, often use passive voice (“The suspect was apprehended at the corner of Oak and Main Streets”).