Salam colleagues,
Hope everyone is safe and sound with their families in these critical days of coronoa time.
I'm preparing a lecture on the use of 'voice' in research writing. Traditionally the passive voice was highly recommended, but recently it is not that much.
I'd like to have your opinion concerning passive voice in academic writing.
Do you still consider it in your papers, theses, etc?
And would you please let me know of the journals that still focus on the use of passive voice in their author's guidelines?
Any further advice in this concern are highly welcomed.
Thanks in advance,
Zainab Jaafar
Using the passive voice is creating an artificial distance between the authors of the publication and the reader. Its aim is to sound objective, yet for me it feels 'old-fashioned'.
I agree with Ronald that it can feel 'old fashioned' but, just as positivist approaches to research prevail and are 'alive and well, so too is the passive voice in 'scholarly' writing. It's often the same with academic teaching and assignment writing etc - and, yet, this is 'alien' to most in my disciplines. In academia, we teach and encourage the use of the passive voice (as well as third-person perspective) - yet, in clinical practice, patient notes, care plans etc are not written in this style.
The passive voice arguement, as Ronald states, is objectivity. However, that implies an assumption that if authors write in a non-passive manner - then they will automatically resort or be 'lured' into subjectivity. That is simply not the case - and is down to teaching and encouraging scholalrly writing that is also 'engaging'. That said, the discipline can also dictate the level of 'passivity' in writing i.e. the hard sciences. Of course, we don't want to encourage subjectivity - when it comes to statements of fact i.e. 'I think that this is rubbish' but we can still say this in a realtively objective and engaing mannner i.e. 'The quality appears questionable gievn that...'.
Passive voice is weak writing, and we want strong writing so that our readers will be engaged.
When passive voice is turned into active voice, it is rare that the sentence/paragraph is not strengthened and improved.
I have never seen a journal's guidelines for authors specify passive voice but maybe they do in some other fields than mine.
If the agent is well-known,I do prefer passivization as a sort of language proficiency.
There is no specific rule for academic writing that we can generalise. The academic writing in science and medicine, cannot be compared with writing in education, psychology, social science and business. My advice is to read the literature and maybe show examples from top journals on the academic writing used. The matter is not personal views or what we prefer. Therefore, if you are aiming for presenting a useful lecture to academics, you have to show scholarly approaches in your presentation. I hope this helps.
Ronald Rousseau, Dean Whitehead Michael W. Marek, Hassan Izzeddin Sarsak
Eman Riyadh AlqaisiThank you all for your contributions.
Yes, I'm still reading on this topic more and found some researches in which some long- period surveys are made in this concern.
I will consider all your comments as well.
Thank you
There is no specific rule for academic writing that we can generalise. The academic writing in science and medicine, cannot be compared with writing in education.
Mohammed Ismael Rushdi Thank you for your contribution.
Actually the passive voice was highly recommended in the academic writing books previously, but the recent trend is weighing much over the use of the active voice, especially in the fields of science.
"The APA 6th Edition, Section 3.18, indicates that writers should use the active voice for clarity (APA, 2010, p. 77). Writing in the active voice means the subject of the sentence clearly performs the action that the verb expresses.
APA stresses using the active voice to make it clear to the reader who is taking action in the sentence. The reason is that the use of passive voice often makes it difficult for the reader to determine who is taking the action of the verb."... Read more at: https://academicguides.waldenu.edu/formandstyle/writing/scholarlyvoice/activepassive
"Nature journals prefer authors to write in the active voice ('we performed the experiment...') as experience has shown that readers find concepts and results to be conveyed more clearly if written directly." Read more at: https://www.nature.com/nature-research/for-authors/write
There's a fundamental difference between writing subjectively and using active voice. Researchers should avoid the former. Using active voice is recommended to help the readers distinguish what you borrowed from literature and what you have done. Check out the video link below -- from a course on scientific writing at Stanford university:
https://youtu.be/aZqjYzW-jtw
Also see these RG relevant Q&As:
https://www.researchgate.net/post/In_what_cases_is_it_appropriate_to_use_first-or_second-person_pronouns_eg_I_we_in_research_papers_and_dissertations
And this:
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Active_versus_Passive_Voice_Which_one_is_Preffered_in_Scientific_Writing
Hi
Using passive voice in academic writing is acceptable, but the researcher should try to fewer uses, I agree with that passive voice is used to describe a process, the results of the research,
Best regards
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