How Superheroes Can Help You Find Passive Voice

During the twentieth century, scientific and medical writers started using more—and overusing—passive voice to make their writing sound more objective and formal. However, passive construction robs writing of clarity and drains readers’ interest.

Fortunately, over the past decade, we have seen more support for using active voice. Active voice is clearer, gives writing a compelling tone, and makes the reader’s job easy.

But changing our writing habits can be challenging. And we can easily overlook passive voice in our writing. Although you can find some tools to highlight passive voice in your text, you can also enlist help from superheroes.

Call for Superheroes

When you feel unsure of whether a sentence is passive or active, lean on superheroes. Insert the phrase by superheroes into the sentence after the verb. If the sentence makes sense with superheroes in it, then the sentence is passive. If the sentence does not make sense with superheroes in it, then the sentence is active.

Example 1

Cells were incubated for 48 hours.

Cells were incubated by superheroes for 48 hours. (passive)

Example 2

We determined whether the drug induced cell apoptosis.

We determined by superheroes whether the drug induced cell apoptosis. (active)

Example 3

The patients were treated with epinephrine.

The patients were treated by superheroes with epinephrine. (passive)

Example 4

Clinicians reviewed medical charts in the electronic health record.

Clinicians reviewed by superheroes medical charts in the electronic health record. (active)