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Active vs. Passive Voice in Academic Writing

Prefer the active voice so the actor is easy to see; use the passive only when the recipient of the action should come first. This page follows APA 7 §§4.13 and 4.16 as reprinted by Cal State Fullerton’s 2026 PATH guide, the CMOS 18 index entry that defines voice at §5.122, Nature Portfolio’s writing guidance, and UNC’s Passive Voice and Should I Use “I”? handouts. It is the voice decision. It is not the error map in grammar mistakes and not the word-choice rewrite in how to write clearly.

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How to Choose Active vs Passive Voice: Quick Answer

APA Style permits both voices and then tells you which one to reach for first. Write the actor, then the verb, then the object when you are describing what people did. Switch to passive when the experiment, the sample, or the result is the point and the doer would only clutter the sentence. Chicago’s usage Q&A adds the other half of the rule: do not hunt the passive out of a paper as a policy, and do not use it to hide who acted.

Templates (fill with your actual actor and action)

Active (default):

Actor + verb + object. Example shape: We interviewed 40 nurses.

Passive (on purpose):

Recipient + be + past participle (+ by actor). Example shape: Participants were randomly assigned to conditions.

Solo APA paper:

Use I for your own work: I coded the transcripts.

Coauthored APA paper:

Use we for the authors together: We coded the transcripts.

Do not write:

The researcher coded the transcripts. / It was found that…

The American Psychological Association states the preference on the Active and passive voice page (Publication Manual, 7th ed., §4.13; Concise Guide §2.13). The Style Center itself is often blocked from automated fetches; the wording below is the CSUF PATH 2026 reprint of that page:

APA Style, “Active and passive voice” (CSUF PATH 2026 reprint)

Both the active and the passive voice are permitted in APA Style. However, writers often overuse the passive voice.
Use the active voice as much as possible to create direct, clear, and concise sentences, especially when you are writing about the actions of people.
Use the passive voice when it is more important to focus on the recipient of an action than on who performed the action, such as when describing an experimental setup.

What Active and Passive Voice Are

Voice is a fact about the verb and its subject, not a measure of formality. The CMOS 18 index defines the term at §5.122 (active voice also appears at §§5.21, 5.119, 5.123, 5.139, and 5.198). The public usage Q&A still points editors to the 17th-edition paragraph at §5.118 unless otherwise marked; the 18th-edition index moved the definition to §5.122. In active voice the subject performs the verb. In passive voice the subject receives it. Only a transitive verb — a verb that can take an object — has this contrast. "The data are robust" is not passive: are is a linking verb naming a state, not an action done to the data.

APA Style's own pair (CSUF PATH 2026 reprint)

Active:

the children ate the cookies

Passive, actor named:

the cookies were eaten by the children

Passive, actor omitted — APA's warning:

the cookies were eaten
did the children eat the cookies, or was it the dog?

The UNC Writing Center gives a test you can run on a draft without a grammar checker:

UNC Writing Center, “Passive Voice”

form of “to be” + past participle = passive voice
Why was the road crossed by the chicken?

The chicken is doing the crossing, but road is the grammatical subject. The familiar active form puts the actor first: why did the chicken cross the road?

Myths that waste a revision pass

UNC opens by listing what passive voice is not. Treat these as revision filters, not style-guide folklore.

UNC Writing Center myths, with the official counterexamples

  • Passive voice is not a grammar error. It is a clarity choice.
  • A to be verb is not automatically passive. "John is a good student" describes a state.
  • First person is not automatically active. You can write a first-person passive sentence.
  • "Never use the passive" is itself a myth. Some sentences are clearer that way.
  • Grammar checkers catch only a fraction of passives, because they are not marking an error.

UNC first-person passive:

I was hit by the dodgeball.

UNC state-of-being (not passive):

John is a good student

When APA 7 Wants the Active Voice

Reach for active voice when a person did something you need the reader to track: who recruited, who coded, who argues, who recommends. The APA Style instructional aid (“Let’s Get Active: Active Voice,” last updated 7 November 2023) repeats §4.13 in classroom language and then gives a public-health sentence whose actor would disappear in the passive.

APA Style instructional aid, “Let’s Get Active: Active Voice” (7 November 2023)

To create direct, clear, and concise sentences, especially when you are writing about the actions of people, use the active voice.

Active example from the aid:

Health department officials reported data on the spread of the COVID-19 Pirola variant.

Classroom pair from the same aid:

The teacher gave scratch paper to the students before they took their test.
The scratch paper was given to the students by their teacher before they took their test.

That public-health sentence is active because the officials are the point. "Data were reported on the spread of the COVID-19 Pirola variant" would hide the agency that stood behind the numbers. Use the same test on your own methods and discussion sentences: if a reader would fairly ask who, name them.

When Passive Voice Is the Right Choice

APA 7 §4.13 keeps the passive for experimental setups and other sentences whose job is the recipient, not the technician. The instructional aid’s soil-quality sentence is the official worked case. UNC adds three situations in which the passive is not a dodge: you want the object in front, you do not know the actor, or the reader does not need the actor.

Official cases where passive earns its keep

APA Style instructional aid (experimental setup):

The soil quality experiment was conducted in three stages—each stage judging the improvement of the soil when infused with a substantial number of unknown organic ingredients.

UNC, emphasize the object:

One hundred votes are required to pass the bill.

UNC, unknown dumper:

Over 120 different contaminants have been dumped into the river.

UNC, reader does not need the obstetrician:

Baby Sophia was delivered at 3:30 a.m. yesterday.

UNC’s own gloss on the birth announcement is the decision rule: family and friends care about the baby, not Dr. Susan Jones; a hospital shift report might name the doctor. Apply that to a methods paragraph. "Samples were centrifuged at 4 °C" is fine when any trained technician would have done the same step. "We excluded three outliers after inspecting the residuals" is not a procedure. It is a judgment, and APA wants the judge in the subject slot.

First Person Is Not the Same as Active Voice

Students still arrive with a rule that academic prose may not say I or we. APA Style calls that a myth and has said so since the second edition of the Publication Manual in 1974. Section 4.16 (Concise Guide §2.16) tells you to use first person for your own work and your own views so the reader is not left guessing whether "the researcher" is you or someone you cite. A solo author uses I. Coauthors use we. Do not use we to mean "people in general." The wording below is the Alamo Colleges reprint of that page (last updated 29 May 2026).

APA Style, “First-person pronouns” (Alamo Colleges reprint, 29 May 2026)

Use first-person pronouns in APA Style to describe your work as well as your personal reactions.

Correct, solo author:

I explored treatments for social anxiety.
Do not use the third person to refer to yourself.

Avoid:

The author explored treatments for social anxiety.

Editorial we to avoid:

We often worry about what other people think of us.

Specified we:

As young adults, we often worry about what other people think of us.

The older APA Style blog post “Me, Me, Me” (15 May 2014) is still the plain-language version of §4.16:

APA Style blog, Chelsea Lee, “Me, Me, Me” (15 May 2014)

If you did something, say, “I did it”—there’s no reason to hide your own agency by saying “the author [meaning you] did X” or to convolute things by using the passive “X was done [meaning done by you].”

UNC’s Should I Use “I”? handout splits two questions students mash together: whether to write I, and whether to narrate personal experience. You can do the first without doing the second. The handout’s own pairs show when first person clarifies the actor and when it merely pads an already-obvious stance.

UNC Writing Center, “Should I Use “I”?”

UNC, first person clarifies who explored:

In studying American popular culture of the 1980s, the question of to what degree materialism was a major characteristic of the cultural milieu was explored.

UNC revision:

In our study of American popular culture of the 1980s, we explored the degree to which materialism characterized the cultural milieu.

UNC, drop the announcement of belief:

I think that Aristotle’s ethical arguments are logical and readily applicable to contemporary cases, or at least it seems that way to me.

UNC revision:

Aristotle’s ethical arguments are logical and readily applicable to contemporary cases.

The MLA Style Center is less mandatory and more practical. Michael Kandel tells humanities writers to treat I as a tool, not a banned word and not a requirement:

MLA Style Center, Michael Kandel, “Using ‘I’ in Academic Writing”

Let the first-person singular be, instead, a tool that you take out when you think it’s needed and that you leave in the toolbox when you think it’s not.

Kandel’s cases for taking it out: you are narrating a discovery, describing how you teach, disagreeing with another scholar without claiming absolute truth, or you need I to stay clear and direct. His cases for leaving it in the toolbox: I appearing so often it becomes off-putting, and padding an already-obvious stance with "I believe" or "it seems to me."

What Journals Want versus What a Lab Report May Require

STEM journals have been moving toward active voice for years; that is a written rule now, not a vibe. Nature Portfolio tells authors, in the current "How to write your paper" checklist, to write clear and direct sentences and then names the construction it wants.

Nature Portfolio, “How to write your paper”

Write clear and direct sentences. Using the active voice (‘we performed the experiment...’) typically helps readers better understand concepts and results described in a paper.

That is not a twenty-first-century fad. Watson and Crick’s 25 April 1953 Nature letter — "Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid" — opens in the first-person plural. The drop-cap W on the journal page is easy to miss in later scans; the sentence is We wish…. The JAMA 1993 reprint and the Exploratorium annotated text carry the same opening.

Watson and Crick, Nature 171 (25 April 1953): 737

We wish to suggest a structure for the salt of deoxyribose nucleic acid (D.N.A.). This structure has novel features which are of considerable biological interest.

UNC still warns that your course may not follow Nature. Some instructors want the doer removed from a lab report, especially in Materials and Methods: "then the human genome was sequenced" rather than "then we sequenced the human genome." Ask before you recast a whole methods section into we. Even then, UNC’s science examples show you can stay active without first person.

UNC Writing Center, science without hiding the actor

Passive science (UNC):

A number of things are indicated by these results.

Active without we:

These results indicate a number of things.

Passive clinical sentence (UNC):

The balloon is positioned in an area of blockage and is inflated.

Named clinician:

The surgeon positions the balloon in an area of blockage and inflates it.

Actor missing (UNC):

Heart disease is considered the leading cause of death in the United States.

Named researchers:

Researchers have concluded that heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States.
Voice by writing situation — check the syllabus or author guidelines before you default
SituationUsual choiceWhy
APA methods: your decisionsActive first person§4.16 wants I or we, not "the researcher."
APA methods: a standard instrument stepPassive is acceptable§4.13: the setup matters more than the technician.
Nature, Science, and many STEM journalsActive, usually weNature’s current author page names "we performed the experiment..."
Course lab report whose rubric bans I/wePassive in Methods if requiredUNC: follow the instructor; journals are not the grader.
History or literature essayActive; name the actorUNC: "The working class was marginalized" hides the system that did it.
Recommendations and implicationsActiveA named actor can be held to the verb: agencies should, schools should, we should.

History and Humanities: Name the Actor

In a history or literature paper the missing actor is often the whole argument. UNC’s American-history trio is the failure mode: the sentence reports an outcome and leaves the cause, the institution, and the decision-maker off the page. The same handout’s anthropology example names the party that passed the law. Do not hide inside "It is argued that…" when you are summarizing a critic.

UNC Writing Center, history, anthropology, and literary analysis

Lazy passive (UNC):

The working class was marginalized. African Americans were discriminated against. Women were not treated as equals.

UNC anthropology paper, actor missing:

A new system of drug control laws was set up.

Named institution:

The Lao People’s Revolutionary Party set up a new system of drug control laws.

Plot summary that hides the novelist:

Tom and Huck are portrayed as…

Named actor:

Twain portrays Tom and Huck as…

Named critic:

Anderson argues that…

UNC Odyssey example, actor missing:

When her house was invaded, Penelope had to think of ways to delay her remarriage.

UNC revision:

After suitors invaded Penelope’s house, she had to think of ways to fend them off.

Those sentences are from UNC’s handout, not invented seminar papers. If you keep a passive in a thesis statement — "Penelope is not considered a hero" — UNC’s next question is the right one: not considered by whom? You, the critics, or modern readers of the Odyssey? Active voice forces the citation.

Do Not Use Passive Voice to Hide Responsibility

This is the one use every source on this page condemns. UNC quotes George Orwell’s "swindles and perversions" and then the bureaucratic pair instructors still mark. The Chicago Q&A uses the same test on technical prose: "Lies were told" is the sentence to refuse. A later Q&A calls a blanket ban on the passive a superstition — the problem is the missing actor, not the construction.

The dodge, in the sources' own words

UNC / Orwell's target:

Mistakes were made.

UNC's Exxon sentence:

The Exxon Company accepts that a few gallons might have been spilled.

CMOS Q&A, Usage and Grammar #198:

Although it’s good to avoid excessive use of the passive voice, and it’s especially important to avoid using it to hide who has done something (“Lies were told”), the best writing usually involves regular use of the passive, and it would be a mistake to root it out as a policy.

CMOS Q&A, Usage and Grammar #185:

The idea that the passive must be avoided is a superstition that language professionals long ago abandoned, although the prohibition remains popular.

CMOS Q&A #185 on mixing voices:

in good writing a mix of active and passive is essential for variation and eloquence, as you will find in any classic of English literature. (Strunk and White use the passive throughout The Elements of Style after famously recommending against it.)

Both Chicago answers note that they rely on the 17th edition unless otherwise marked. The 18th-edition index still locates the definition at §5.122 and the long by-phrase at §5.198; the Q&A advice about hiding the actor did not change. If a limitations paragraph in your paper sounds like "Mistakes were made," name the mistake and the person or process that produced it.

How to Convert a Sentence without Inventing an Actor

UNC’s conversion method is mechanical: put the doer in the subject slot. Do not invent a doer you cannot defend. If the source did not name who dumped the contaminants, leaving the passive is more honest than writing "factories dumped…" as a guess. If you are the doer, APA 4.16 wants I or we, not a fictional "the team."

Official pairs, flipped

APA aid, passive → active:

The scratch paper was given to the students by their teacher… → The teacher gave scratch paper to the students…

APA Style, passive → question:

the cookies were eaten → Who ate them? If you know, write the children ate the cookies.

UNC, active science without we:

A number of things are indicated by these results. → These results indicate a number of things.

Nature shape:

The experiment was performed… → we performed the experiment...

Dangling modifier (CMOS 18 §5.119 flags the pattern):

Template, not a source: Using qualitative methods, the study was conducted. → Using qualitative methods, we conducted the study.

A Revision Checklist for Voice

Do not audit voice in the first draft if that freeze keeps you from finishing a paragraph. UNC says clarity usually arrives in revision. Run this list on the printed or exported draft, not on the blinking cursor.

Ask these in order

  1. Find be + past participle. If both are there, you have a candidate, not an automatic rewrite.
  2. Is there an action? If the verb only names a state ("the argument is sound"), stop. That is not passive.
  3. Who or what performs the action? Are they in the subject slot, at the end after by, or missing?
  4. Would a fair reader ask who? If yes, and you know, write the active sentence.
  5. Are you hiding a decision, an error, or a political actor? If yes, rewrite. "Mistakes were made" is the test case.
  6. Are you summarizing a critic or a novelist? Put the surname in front of the verb.
  7. Does the syllabus or journal require passive Methods? Obey that local rule; do not export it to the discussion.
  8. In an APA paper you wrote alone, did you write we or "the researcher"? Change those to I.
  9. Did a grammar checker flag every is? Ignore the ones that are not be + participle.

Do

  • Default to active for people's actions (APA §4.13).
  • Use I in a solo APA paper and we with coauthors (§4.16).
  • Keep passive for setups, unknown actors, and object-front emphasis.
  • Name historians, novelists, and agencies when you summarize them.
  • Check the journal or lab rubric before you recast Methods.
  • Mix voices inside a paper when the job of the sentence changes.

Do not

  • Ban the passive as a superstition (CMOS Q&A #185).
  • Use "the author" or "the researcher" to sound formal.
  • Use editorial we for people in general (APA §4.16).
  • Write "It was found that" when you found it.
  • Invent an actor so a sentence can become active.
  • Trust a grammar checker as a complete passive detector (UNC).

Voice is a revision pass, not a citation problem

Once the actor is in the right slot, the next job is usually a clarity pass or a structured revise — not a new citation style. Use the two guides that sit next to this one.

Revise the draftCut the fog around the verb

Active vs passive voice: common questions

Is passive voice a grammar error?
No. UNC’s first myth is that it is an error. APA 7 §4.13 and Chicago both permit it. The failure is overuse, a missing actor the reader needs, or using it to hide who acted.
Does APA 7th edition allow I and we?
Yes, and it prefers them for your own work. Publication Manual §4.16: use I if you are the only author and we for you and your coauthors. Do not write "the researcher" or "the authors" about yourself. The Alamo Colleges reprint of the APA first-person page (29 May 2026) keeps the official pair: "I explored treatments for social anxiety," not "The author explored…"
Should a scientific lab report use passive voice?
Follow the rubric in front of you. Nature Portfolio currently tells journal authors to write "we performed the experiment...". UNC still sees course instructors who want Methods in the passive so the student disappears. Those are different audiences. Do not copy a journal’s we into a lab report that forbids first person, and do not copy a lab-report ban into a Nature manuscript.
How do I identify passive voice in a sentence?
UNC’s formula is form of to be + past participle. "The cookies were eaten" is passive. "The cookies are stale" is not: are is a state. "I was hit by the dodgeball" is first person and passive. A by phrase is a hint, not proof.
Is "The results show" passive voice?
No. Show is an active verb and results is the subject performing it. UNC prefers "These results indicate…" to "A number of things are indicated by these results." You can write active scientific sentences without I or we.
When is passive voice better than active?
When the recipient should come first (APA’s experimental setup; UNC’s "One hundred votes are required"), when you honestly do not know the actor (UNC’s dumped contaminants), or when the reader does not need the actor (UNC’s birth announcement). Never when you are avoiding blame.
Does the Chicago Manual of Style ban the passive?
No. CMOS 18 defines voice at §5.122. The usage Q&A (17th edition, still posted) says the best writing uses the passive regularly and that rooting it out as a policy is a mistake. Q&A #185 calls the ban a superstition and notes that Strunk and White used the passive throughout The Elements of Style. What Chicago attacks is the hide-the-actor sentence: "Lies were told."
Can I mix active and passive voice in one paper?
Yes. APA uses both in the same manuscript: active for your decisions, passive for a setup. CMOS Q&A #185 says a mix is essential. Mix by job — methods step versus interpretation — not at random inside one paragraph.
Should I replace I with "the researcher" to sound objective?
Not in APA Style. §4.16 says third-person self-reference creates ambiguity: the reader cannot tell whether you or another scholar did the work. Objectivity comes from methods, evidence, and limits, not from pretending you were not in the room. UNC’s 1980s-culture pair shows the same fix: "we explored" is clearer than "the question…was explored."
Do grammar checkers reliably find passive voice?
No. UNC’s fifth myth: because passive voice is not an error, checkers miss a large share of it and also flag ordinary be verbs. Search your draft for was, were, been, and being next to a participle, then decide sentence by sentence.