Active vs. Passive Voice

As mentioned above, one of the important things to keep in mind while writing a thesis is being precise in your language. (You should keep this in mind for your essay as a whole. You want to be as specific as possible whenever possible.) We thought it would be a good time to pause with the foundations of the essay to explain an important piece of grammar to keep in mind while you write: active vs. passive voice. Here's a small overview to help you identify it so you can avoid it.

Note: Some paper/subjects require you to use passive voice rather than active, such as Nursing papers. You need to keep in mind the objective of your assignment when deciding which verb type should be implemented.

• Active Voice is putting the subject at the beginning of the sentence, followed by an action, and then the object that receives the action. (Subject + Action + Object = Active Voice)

• Passive Voice is when the object of an action is turned into the subject of a sentence, which means that whoever or whatever is performing the action is not the grammatical subject of the sentence. (Form of “to be” + Past Participle = Passive Voice)