{"id":1749,"date":"2009-06-19T00:01:48","date_gmt":"2009-06-19T07:01:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=1749"},"modified":"2026-06-12T09:20:45","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T09:20:45","slug":"writing-room-the-passive-voice-and-its-cousins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/writing-room-the-passive-voice-and-its-cousins\/","title":{"rendered":"In the Garden With the Grammar Geek: Is It Ever OK to Use the Passive Voice?"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_28245\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-28245\" style=\"width: 500px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/2009\/06\/19\/writing-room-the-passive-voice-and-its-cousins\/\" rel=\"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/2009\/06\/19\/writing-room-the-passive-voice-and-its-cousins\/\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-28245 size-large\" src=\"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/jillian-steinberger-with-pruning-sheers-2.webp\" alt=\"Garden Artisan Jillian Steinberger prunes the camellias in Barbara Falconer Newhall's yard. Photo by Barbara Newhall\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-28245\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Passive voice: The camelias and rhodies in our garden <strong>were pruned<\/strong> by gardener Jillian Steinberger. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><em>By Barbara Falconer Newhall<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Writing teachers have been warning us against using the passive voice since high school. And rightly so. Passive sentences can be wordy and vague. But they can also come in handy.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>What&#8217;s\u00a0a passive sentence?\u00a0One way to think of it is a\u00a0sentence that omits or obscures the doer of the action &#8212; the agent<\/p>\n<p>For starters, a\u00a0sentence is passive if it has a passive voice verb:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;The rhododendron <strong>was pruned<\/strong> last month.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Yawn. Give that sentence a living, breathing subject &#8212; a doer &#8212; and it comes alive:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;Jillian, our dynamo gardener, <strong>pruned<\/strong> the rhododendron last month.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Some sentences just <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/English_passive_voice\">feel passive<\/a>. For example, any sentence that starts out &#8220;There is&#8221; risks passivity. Compare:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>Boring:<\/em> &#8220;<strong>There are<\/strong> snapdragons <strong>thriving<\/strong> in my front yard.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li><em>Snappier:<\/em> &#8220;Snapdragons <strong>thrive<\/strong> in my front yard.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1812\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1812\" style=\"width: 199px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/2009\/06\/19\/writing-room-the-passive-voice-and-its-cousins\/pansies-smallest-2009-06\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-1812\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-1812 \" title=\"pansies-yellow-and-blue-purple\" src=\"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/pansies-smallest-2009-06.webp\" alt=\"Last year's pansies came up again this spring. photo by B.F. Newhall\" width=\"199\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1812\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Last year&#8217;s pansies came up again this spring.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Turning a verb into a noun and making it into\u00a0the subject is another good way to squeeze the life out of a sentence:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>Boring:<\/em> &#8220;<strong>Planting<\/strong> pansies<strong> is<\/strong> how I spent the day.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li><em>Engaging:<\/em> &#8220;<strong>I spent<\/strong> the day planting pansies.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Still, the passive voice has its uses. Sometimes it helps the reader out by keeping the subject of a sentence short and sweet. Notice how long, long, long the subject is in the first &#8212; murky &#8212; sentence below:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>Murky:<\/em> Surpressing seed germination\u00a0with a layer of newspaper, then covering it with\u00a0dirt, horse manure and pea-sized redwood bark <strong>solved<\/strong>\u00a0our weed problem.<\/li>\n<li><em>Clearer:<\/em> Our weed problem <strong>was solved<\/strong> by putting down a layer of newspaper to supress seed germination, then\u00a0covering it with dirt, horse manure and pea-sized redwood bark. (Jillian&#8217;s brilliant idea; it worked.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1813\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1813\" style=\"width: 159px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/2009\/06\/19\/writing-room-the-passive-voice-and-its-cousins\/gerbera-sunburst-coral-pink-2009-06\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-1813\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1813 \" title=\"gerbera-sunburst-coral-pink-Monterey-Bay-Nursery\" src=\"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/gerbera-sunburst-coral-pink-2009-06.webp\" alt=\"Redwood bark keeps the weeds down around this Gerbera Sunburst from Monterey Bay Nursery. c 2009 B.F. Newhall\" width=\"159\" height=\"212\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1813\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Redwood bark surpresses the weeds around our &#8220;Gerbera Sunburst Coral Pink.&#8221;<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">You can also enlist the passive voice\u00a0to avoid placing blame:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u00a0&#8220;Dad <strong>served<\/strong> our dinner late.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">That&#8217;s a\u00a0perfectly good sentence with nice narrative tension. But if\u00a0you&#8217;re trying to stay on Dad&#8217;s good side and don&#8217;t mind\u00a0a little tactful obfuscation, you could say:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;We <strong>were served<\/strong> our dinner late.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I&#8217;d love it\u00a0 if you&#8217;d use the comments box below to send along\u00a0any funny, pithy,\u00a0lame\u00a0or obscurantist passive sentences you come across in your reading &#8212;\u00a0or writing!<\/p>\n<p><em>Read about <a href=\"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/2009\/06\/22\/writing-room-the-rhetorician-in-the-white-house-how-i-learned-to-love-the-passive-voice\/\">President Obama<\/a>, master of the\u00a0well crafted passive sentence. Or, if you&#8217;d had enough of grammar for the day, read more about Jillian&#8217;s handiwork <a href=\"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/2012\/03\/20\/spring-garden-our-brilliant-bursting-buzzing-front-yard\/\">in our unruly garden<\/a>.<br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/2009\/06\/19\/writing-room-the-passive-voice-and-its-cousins\/\" rel=\"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/2009\/06\/19\/writing-room-the-passive-voice-and-its-cousins\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-28245 size-large\" src=\"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/06\/jillian-steinberger-with-pruning-sheers-2-500x281.jpg\" alt=\"Garden Artisan Jillian Steinberger prunes the camellias in Barbara Falconer Newhall's yard. Photo by Barbara Newhall\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Passive sentences can be wordy and vague &#8212; or useful. For me, a passive sentence is one that, like it or not, obscures the doer of the action. <a href=\"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/2009\/06\/19\/writing-room-the-passive-voice-and-its-cousins\/\">Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28245,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,52],"tags":[34,66,277,278,279,280,69],"class_list":["post-1749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-on-writing-reading","category-the-writing-room","tag-dont-miss","tag-grammar-geeks","tag-jillian-steinberger","tag-my-unruly-garden","tag-passive-writing","tag-when-is-it-ok-to-use-passive-voice","tag-writing-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1749"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1749\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52818,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1749\/revisions\/52818"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}