Grammatical Person & Voice

Grammatically speaking, person identifies the point of view from which a text is written. In English, grammatical person is described in three categories: first person, second person, and third person. Your choice of writing in first, second, or third person will dictate which personal pronouns you use. See Table 1 for a summary of grammatical persons and their respective pronouns. 

Grammatical voice identifies the relationship between the subject of a sentence and the action being performed. In active voice, the subject of the sentence performs the action. For example:

I (subject) walked (verb) the dog (object).

In passive voice, the object of the action (i.e., the noun on which the action is performed) is made the grammatical subject of the sentence. Look at our sample active voice sentence as it is rewritten in passive voice:

The dog (grammatical subject) was walked (action) by me (prepositional phrase).

“The dog,” which had been the object of our active voice sentence, is not the grammatical subject of the passive voice sentence.

The verb has also changed. In the active voice sentence, we have the simple past tense verb “walked.” In the passive voice sentence, on the other hand, we have a “be” verb and a past participle: “was walked.”

Finally, note that the prepositional phrase “by me” is not necessary for a grammatically complete sentence in passive voice. Omitting it would yield the following sentence:

The dog (grammatical subject) was walked.

Because passive voice is used in scientific writing to obscure the performer of the action to maintain scientific objectivity, the prepositional phrase identifying the performer is often omitted. 

In some academic journals and other professional publications, passive voice is being phased out in favor of active voice, which tends to be more clear and concise. When writing for publication, consult the publication venue's style guide or examples of articles, chapters, etc. from that venue to see whether passive or active voice is preferred. For class assignments, consult your instructor about their preference for active or passive voice.