This article is not intended to replace a full Technical Writing course. It is offered as a quick and dirty guide outlining the basic techniques and styles used within the technical writing field. This guide is for people who do not normally write technical documents.

For clarity and ease of use I am breaking this information into 5 articles that cover the basic techniques used in Technical Writing including:

• Knowing Your Audience

• Top Down Structure

• Writing Clear Sentences

• Being Concise

• Using the Active Voice

If you have ever had to write a large document using Word, you have probably seen the green underlines and been told "Passive voice, consider revising". Thanks for nothing Word. You are not told what passive voice is nor how to fix it by word but not to worry, this article will help set you straight.

Why is Active Voice So Important?

Technical writing is 85% active voice. The other 15% of the writing is passive voice and is used when describing order of operations. With such a high percentage of technical writing being in the active voice, it is important to be able to identify both the active and the passive voice.

The active voice offers the following advantages to the technical writer:

Emphasizes the person or thing performing the action

Allows the reader to grasp the main idea easily

Employs simple sentence structure

Reduces word count by 10-15%

What is Active Voice?

Don't run for the hills just yet, I'm not going to bombard you with long complicated explanations. As mentioned in previous articles, there are plenty of great websites dedicated to grammar. I'm interested in giving you the simplest explanation so you can get busy writing technical documents.

The easiest way to remember Active Voice is that the "Doer" is the subject of the sentence. For example:

Jill (Subject) threw the ball (Object).

The pilot (Subject) landed the plane (Object).

In both examples, Jill and the pilot are the subjects and they are performing the action. The subject is also near the beginning of the sentence. There are cases when the subject is not near the beginning but as I mentioned previously, I am going to keep this simple.

What is Passive Voice?

The passive voice is when the focus of the sentence is on the object, not the subject. In other words the focus is on what is receiving the action, not what is performing the action.

The ball (Object) was thrown by Jill (Subject)

The plane (Object) was landed by the pilot (Subject).

In both examples, the objects, the ball and the plane are the focus of the sentence and the subjects, the doers of the action, are at the end of the sentence.

Another way to tell if the sentence is in the passive voice is the use of the verb "To Be" and a past tense verb. The "To Be" verb (am, are, is, was, were, be, being) plus the past tense verb is a clear indication of passive voice.

The ball WAS (To Be verb) THROWN (past tense of throw) by Jill.

The plane WAS (To Be verb) LANDED (past tense of land) by the pilot.

The passive voice should be used when it is your intention to place the focus on the object such as when describing the order of operations. For example:

First the fuel is filtered by a fuel skid. Next, the fuel is transferred by a pump to a holding tank. Finally the fuel will be loaded into a tanker truck.

Converting Passive Voice to Active Voice

Once you have identified a sentence as using the passive voice, you have to rewrite the sentence using the active voice.

To covert from passive voice to active voice:

Remove the To Be verb.

Identify the Subject (doer of the action).

Move the subject to the beginning of the sentence.

For example:

The plane crash was (To Be) caused by the pilot.(Subject)

The pilot caused the plane crash.

The fuel was (To Be) filtered by the fuel skid.(Subject)

The fuel skid filtered the fuel.

The fact that fuel had been leaking from the under ground tank was (To Be) revealed by the study. (Subject)

The study revealed fuel leaked from the underground tanks.

Conclusion

Remember there is a place for passive voice in technical writing but the majority of your work should be action based and use the active voice.