Who did this? How the passive voice hides the subject of your sentence

Listed among George Orwell’s “swindles and perversions” of writing, it’s important to recognize when you use passive voice and consider if it’s the best choice for your sentence.

What is passive voice?

English sentences usually follow a pattern, subject-verb-object, reflected in “Lauren ate the cookies.” (“Lauren” is the subject. “Ate” is the verb. “Cookies” is the object.) Passive voice follows a different pattern, object-verb-subject, resulting in a sentence such as, “The cookies were eaten by Lauren.”

This grammatical construction also allows for the subject, the one doing the action, to be dropped from the author’s sentence completely, becoming “The cookies were eaten.”

In English, the first words of a sentence carry more weight. In a passive construction, this means there’s more emphasis on the object of the sentence and a less emphasis on the subject doing the action. The difference between the active and the passive sentences is stark, as the passive voice obscures or removes the connection between me, the subject, and my actions, eating the cookies.