“What is the passive voice?
The passive voice is a grammatical construction. The easiest way to explain the passive voice is by contrasting it with the active voice. The active voice is the standard English sentence structure. Thwie simplest possible sentences feature an actor (the subject), who does (the verb) something to either a person, animal or thing (the receiver).

Mom hugged me

In the passive voice, the actor and receiver are switched around. The receiver becomes the grammatical subject. Note that the meaning of the sentence stays exactly the same. The only difference is the word order.

I was hugged by mom

In some passive sentences, you can omit the actor. ‘I was hugged’, for example, is a perfectly sensible passive sentence, although it provides less information.

Why should I avoid the passive voice?
Let’s cut to the chase: using the passive voice almost always makes your writing more distant and your message less clear. There are two main reasons for this.

Wordy
First of all, the passive voice is wordy. The passive alternative to an active sentence is simply longer. Consider these two sentences:
1. The passive voice almost always makes your message less clear.
2. Your message is almost always made less clear by using the passive voice.
You convey the same message by using the passive, but add three words. When overusing the passive voice in your text, this can really add up.

Sentence structure
In addition, the passive voice uses a sentence structure which requires more cognitive effort. Your reader will spend valuable working memory on making sense of the sentence. This decreases the likelihood of you getting your message across.

Let’s explore why the passive voice demands more effort. As I told you before, the basic active sentence structure is quite consistent and logical in English. The passive voice turns this all the way around. You first read what was affected. Then you read what happened to it. Then you learn how it was affected. You discover who or what was responsible only at the very end. This sequence differs from how we usually make sense of events. Moreover, we expect the actor to be in the subject position, so we are slightly disoriented. This means constructing an image of what happens takes a tiny moment longer. Again, these moments can easily add up if you overuse the passive voice.

In the example I gave, there is no added benefit to using the passive: the active sentence conveys the same information. Whenever you use passive voice, always consider whether a better, active alternative is available.

What are the exceptions?

Sometimes, using the passive voice can be the only logical way to word a sentence. Mostly, this occurs when the actor is unknown or irrelevant. Let’s look at an example I used in the first paragraph of this very text:

In the passive voice, the actor and receiver are switched around.
There is no identifiable actor here, nor would he or she be relevant. After all, we’re talking about a general action here, not a specific one. Any alternative active sentence would be less clear and concise than the passive sentence I wrote, so it’s the best option available.

Alternatively, you may want to use a passive sentence to focus on the receiver. This works when the object is more central to the topic than the actor:

J.F. Kennedy was killed in 1963 in Dallas, Texas by Lee Harvey Oswald.

This means that we’re not here to tell you to avoid the passive voice like the plague. If it beats the active alternative, by all means: use it! Rules pertaining to style are seldom cast in stone, so don’t make the mistake of following the rule of thumb too strictly. Do what seems right to you and what makes your text flow nicely. A maximum of 10% generally suffices. You should be able to achieve numbers even lower than that by following our advice.”

But, WordPress is here, offering you an easy way to beat your competitors for that lucrative first page on Google. All you have to do is use Relative text in your website and write blog posts on a regular basis on topics that relate to your business or service. If you write with authority about something you know well, then you become the expert. How many other carpenters do you know that write with competency about woodworking and house renovation?

Writing can be chore or even frightening to some business owners. All it takes is a little practice and perhaps reading a book on how to write well. I recommend you buy and read E.B. White’s Elements of Style. It is a small book that packs a lot of valuable information. The Seventeenth rule states “Omit Needless Words”. You must be concise. Take out everything that is not useful. It is especially important in writing for the web.

Your web designer should guide you in creating the best text for your website. If he or she is a good editor, they can whip that copy into shape in no time. Just keep writing and communicating what you know.

I recommended using a WordPress template or theme from WordPress.org. Choosing the right theme out of the thousand or so is a critical first task. Not only do I look for layout, but I look for good typography and flexibility within the theme. The themes come prepackaged and may look exciting on the whole, but the nuts and bolts don’t fit.

Bob worked on his text, while I went about finding the right photograph for his banner. What better image than Moby Dick‘s author, Herman Mellville’s desk? Herman Mellville wrote the novella Bartleby The Scrivener, where Bob took his name. Working in Photoshop added some mellow tones to the image and it more or less fit into the space for the banner. A font from Typekit helped give his banner a brand.

To make a long story short, we added the pages and text as well as images, the social media links and illustration. Bob is trained in WP and now writing blogs for his inside News page.

A project designing and producing a book for a prominent family in Boston sent me to Acme Bookbinding in Charlestown, where  the old process and new meet together in the same building. Acme is the oldest continuously operated book bindery in the world. In one room, you have the craftpersons restoring valuable old books and adding gold leaf to book covers. On the other floor are the offset printing presses or the digital presses. Covers are produced by hand and color foil can be added to the cover titles. Wandering through the press room you discover books in process that have been created for book art collectors. The books are of photographs, drawings and musings.

Michelle Brennen, manager at Acme, is the chair of the New England Book Show which was recently held at the Mary Baker Eddy Library this past May. It’s an elegant evening for lovers of books and I for one do not plan to miss it next year! Also check out the Boston Bookbuilders club if you are in the business of publishing books.

Alice Bliss, a novel, is being published by Pamela Dorman Books, Penguin/ Viking, and will be on sale soon! She is currently writing a new novel,“A Catalogue of Birds,” as well as a song cycle with composer Elena Ruehr, and a series of choral works with composer Roger Ames. Ms. Harrington teaches playwriting at M.I.T and is a frequent guest artist at Tufts, Harvard (where she was a visiting Briggs Copeland Lecturer), Wellesley, University of Iowa, and other campuses.

The September issue of the newsletter features Stuart Sandler, who co-directs no less than five foundries: Font Diner, Sideshow, Breaking the Norm, Tart Workshop and Mister Retro. “He is enamored with the lettering and typefaces of the 1920s through the 1960s, a period when letter-making was a very different craft indeed.”

The book, available from Amazon, is only $23, but you can access the interviews at the MyFonts online archive. Enjoy!