Passive Voice

A passive construct exists when the object of the action is the subject of the sentence.

The use of the passive voice in writing is not a grammatical error. It is an issue of style. But largely a style we want to avoid for a number of reasons, the main one being that the use of the passive voice tends to make sentences longer.

• Radiographers will give you your follow-up appointment.
• Your follow-up appointment will be given to you by the radiographers.

This can make the text harder to read. Also if you look at the two sentences above note how the use of the passive voice changes the focus of the sentence.

The plain English campaign recognise that the use of passive voice is correct in certain instances, but recommend that only 10% of the document is written in the passive voice. This value is shown as a red line on the graph.

In this part of the study the same documents were looked at as in the Readability analysis. The documents were then assessed using WordPerfect X3, Word 2003 and WordPro for the use of passive voice. The histograms in the graph above represent the average value from the 3 tests. The whiskers represent the range of passive use for each hospital within the sample examined.