Beware The Passive Voice: The Power Of Active Verbs
Today-s readers want action, not superfluous phrases. They want to read quickly, get to the point and move on with their day. Passive voice writing tends to have long sentences and difficult phrasing. The action is at the end of the sentence and most readers will give up reading the document before they finish the first line.
Using active voice gives the reader the important information right from the start with subject and action verbs. The reader knows who performs the action and what is happening. They do not have to read to the end of the line to find out who did what. This helps explain it more. Active voice is less confusing.
Here are examples of active and passive sentences, “The dog chased the rabbit.’ and “The rabbit was chased by the dog.’ The first example is active voice and tells you exactly what happened using an active verb while the second sentence forces you to read to the end before you find out what happened to the rabbit.
The passive voice loses the reader-s interest and the writer’s message is lost. Active voice is direct, bold and informative. It grabs and holds the reader with important information written in the most direct way.