plagiarism • formal prose • active voice • quotations • citation

Active Voice

In general, use the active voice in your prose, rather than the passive voice. What does that mean? It's all in the subject and verb:

Active: The desperate student launched a snowball at the dragon.

Passive: The snowball was launched at the dragon.

See the difference? In the active case, the subject is the student; in the passive, the subject is the snowball, and we don't know who or what initiated the action. American English prefers the active voice, not least because it puts the guilty party in the hot seat. We want to know the initiator of the action (and sticking a prepositional phrase, "by the desperate student" into the passive sentence is a clumsier way to solve that problem). Speakers of British English and scientists are two groups who use the passive voice much more regularly ("diphenylchlorohexiuffdaaldehyde is added to the flask"), but that's no excuse. If you insist on using the passive voice often, work up a British accent and/or wear a lab coat regularly, or your history professor will just dismiss you as a bad writer. The aforementioned Strunk & White, Elements of Style, is helpful on this score.