Plain speaking

Active Life

Let me share the advice my doctor gave me on a recent visit: “You need to be more active.” In this case, what’s good for the body is also good for the language. If you want to use plain language you should avoid using the passive voice. Instead, you should try to use the active voice.

This is the passive voice:
“The Land Certificate has been issued by the Registers of Scotland.”

This is the active voice:
“The Registers of Scotland issued the Land Certificate.”

As the Economist Style Guide puts it: “A hit B describes the event more concisely than B was hit by A.” 

Here is another example of the passive voice:
“After the evidence has been considered you will be contacted and you will be told our decision”

Here it is in the active voice:
“After we have considered the evidence we will contact you and tell you our decision.”

In the last pair of examples you will see the passive voice focuses on “the evidence” and ignores the person taking the action. However, the active voice changes the focus and is more natural. Using active verbs makes your writing clearer and more informative. It also makes your language more human and personal.

Passive Hiding

There are cases when you may want – or feel the need - to use the passive voice. For instance, you would use the passive voice to highlight the information in a different way or to hide information from the reader.
“The four band members were arrested for breach of the peace.”

Here, the writer focuses your attention on the four band members.

“A deadline was missed in presenting your case.”

The writer is being deliberately vague. The focus is on the missed deadline. But who missed the deadline? The writer does not want to tell you. This technique is one we have all used, though it is nothing to be proud of.

Help

Unfortunately, it’s all too easy to slip into bad habits and overuse the passive voice. This is one of the many reasons it makes good sense to review your writing.  And the technology on your desktop can lend a helping hand.

Most people use and are familiar with Microsoft Word. However, the software has far more features than many of us want or need. People use the word processor to write basic documents. Some use the built-in spell-checker. But Word also has a grammar checker and though it is neither perfect nor fully developed it can help your writing. (I am using Word 97. I can set the grammar checker by going to the “Tools” menu, selecting “Options” and clicking the “Spelling & Grammar” tab. Other versions may be different.)

If you set the program up correctly, Word’s grammar checker runs when you do a spell-check. (I do not recommend you set the grammar checker up to run as you type.) The program will highlight suspect grammar and suggest changes to improve the text. The grammar checker is basic but does give you an independent view of your writing – even if it is a view you may reject more often than you accept. However, more usefully, Word’s grammar checker also gives you readability statistics in three sections: Counts, Averages and Readability.

Counts

In this section Word gives you the number of words, characters, paragraphs and sentences in your writing. The count is useful if you are, for example, a student writing an essay to a word limit or a writer paid by the word.

Averages

Here Word gives you the average number of sentences in a paragraph, words in a sentence and characters in a word. The count of average words in a sentence is useful for keeping to the recommended target of 15-20 words. (See last month’s column for more details.)

More

Of course, there’s more to plain language practice than using the active voice. But just using the active voice and keeping the word order simple helps avoid common faults. That is a good combination. If you also avoid jargon, write sentences which average 15-20 words and – most importantly – write at the right level for your audience, you’ll be doing fine. And when you review your writing, use Word’s grammar checker and its readability statistics as one of the weapons in your plain language armoury.