Using passive voice
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What is passive voice for? | page 2 of 4 |
Getting the right starting point
Consider the following two clauses, the first of which is active in voice, and the second of which is passive in voice:
The police arrested him.
He was arrested by the police.
These two clauses represent exactly the same event - a man being arrested by the police. However, they have two different starting points, The police and He:
The police arrested him.
He was arrested by the police.
In these two examples, the starting points of the clauses are also their subjects 
but this need not always be the case 
.
The starting point of a clause in a sense tells us what it is about, ie what the topic
of the clause is. The topic of the active clause in the above examples is therefore The
police, ie the people who did the arresting. We can think of it as answering a
question like Who arrested him? The passive clause, on the other hand, has He as
topic, ie the man who was arrested. We can think of it as answering a question like Who
was arrested by the police?
One reason for choosing passive rather than active voice is therefore to get the
starting point of the clause right. To understand why a speaker or writer might want to
put the person or thing affected by the action 
at the beginning of a particular
clause, we need to look at the clause in context. For further information about this, see 
Using passive voice: Passive voice in context.
Getting the right starting point
