7.2 Voice and Point of View

Imagine you’re sitting around with your friends, debating the qualities of a recent Netflix series. Even though you’re all talking about the same thing, the way you say things is different: the resonance of your actual voice, your word choice, accent, speed, and more.

This is true in writing too. In any piece of writing, you can include some of your personal “voice” in the piece. Letting yourself shine through often makes a paper more interesting and engaging to read! Voice is the part of your writing that is unique to you as a writer; it’s like your fingerprint (or, well, your voice). It comes from word choice, syntax, punctuation, and point of view.

One of the best ways to develop your voice is to write a lot. You might try writing a page a day, reading your work out loud, or asking a friend to read through your work. Writers have to “find” their voice through time and practice.

Ultimately, the goal is to find a balance between yourself and the writing expectations of the genre. Find an academic writing style (or persona) that feels appropriate and—if possible—true to who you are.

Passive and Active Voice

In passive voice, the object (or recipient) of the action becomes the subject of the sentence. In other words, the focus is on who (or what) received the action rather than on who (or what) completed the action. Here’s an example to show you what I mean:

Passive: The coffee was drunk by Poppy.
Active: Poppy drank the coffee.

Both of these sentences are grammatically correct, but as you can see, they have some notable differences. The passive construction is a little longer, and it emphasizes the coffee (the recipient of the action) rather than Poppy (the doer of the action). The active version is more concise, and it focuses on Poppy and her actions.

These may seem like small differences, but they add up over the course of a paper. Active voice is often considered sharper, clearer, and cleaner than passive voice. In the example above, you can see why.

So why would anyone ever use passive voice? Well, in some cases, the doer of the action is unknown or irrelevant, as in “The package was delivered this morning” (passive). We don’t know who delivered it, and while the delivery person matters as a human, they don’t matter in the meaning of this sentence.

In other cases, the receiver of the action is more important than the doer; we emphasize the recipient of the action because that’s what matters in the context of the sentence. For example, we almost always say, “She was born in 1994,” which is a passive construction. In this situation, who did the action (her mother) is not the most relevant information. If we wrote, “Her mother gave birth to her in 1994” (active voice), we would be making a conscious decision to highlight her mother’s role at the moment.

This is often true in technical and scientific writing as well, which is why the passive voice is more common in STEM fields. In a lab report, for example, the experiment is more important than the researcher; for that reason, it’s common to write in a passive voice. For example, “Hydrochloric acid was then added” (passive) is more common than “I added hydrochloric acid.”

We also often use passive voice to avoid blaming others in a negative situation. In some cases, this is considered the most polite route. It may feel accusatory or aggressive to say, “You did this assignment incorrectly” (active). Instead, we might say, “This assignment was done incorrectly.” Again, both are correct, but we can make a writerly choice here to focus on the receiver of the action (the assignment) and in this case spare someone’s feelings.

However, be careful! The passive voice is sometimes used in this way to avoid taking responsibility. Newspapers famously use passive voice in a way that emphasizes the victims rather than the criminals. Politicians, corporations, and regular people also use the passive voice to duck blame or responsibility. Consider the following examples:

Passive: Mistakes were made.
Active: We made a mistake. (Or even more unthinkable: I made a mistake.)

You can see how the use of active or passive voice can be a strategic or political choice as well as a stylistic one.

Passive voice isn’t grammatically incorrect, and it has its place. The key (as with all elements of style) is to consider how its use impacts your writing. Notice it and make a choice about when to use it and when to cut it.

You can check your own writing for passive voice. Does the “doer” of the action come after the action (the thing that was done)? Or does the doer disappear completely? If so, the sentence is likely in a passive voice. You can also look for this construction in your sentences:

“to be” verb (is, are, was, etc.) + past participle (walked, taken, seen, etc.) = passive voice

Point of View

Many of your college instructors will ask you to write in third person only and will want you to avoid first or second person. One important reason is that third person point of view focuses on a person or topic outside yourself or the reader, making it the most professional, academic, and objective way to write. The goal of third person point of view is to remove personal, subjective bias from your writing, at least in theory. Most of the writing you will do in college will require you to focus on ideas, people, and issues outside yourself, so third person will be the most appropriate. This point of view also helps your readers stay focused on the topic instead of thinking about you or themselves.

• First person uses the following pronouns: I, me, my, us, we, myself, our, ours…. Any words that include the speaker/writer turn the sentence into first person.
• Second person uses any form of the word “you,” which has the effect of addressing the reader.
• Third person uses pronouns like he, she, it, they, them…. Any words that direct the reader to a person or thing that is not the writer or reader turn the sentence into the third person.

The point of view you choose to write in will depend on your audience and purpose. If your goal is to relate to your audience in a personal way about a topic that you have experience with, then it may be appropriate to use first person point of view to share your experience and connect with your audience.

To “I” or Not to “I”

As a general rule, an “I” voice will give your writing a more personal and subjective feel. That’s why a first-person perspective is common in memoirs and personal essays but rarely seen in STEM fields (although some scientific articles do refer to the researchers as “we,” which is a personal pronoun but somehow slightly less intimate than “I”). Academic writing in the humanities and social sciences is somewhere in between these two extremes—depending on the subject and context, a writer can make their own choice. Many well-known scholars in these fields use an “I” in their academic papers, especially if their connection to the subject is important to understanding their perspective or point. Some authors use it just a little bit—maybe they open their article with a personal anecdote before moving into a more objective tone—while others use it throughout a piece of writing.

It’s worth noting that although writing without the “I” can be read as more objective, all writing is created by people with perspectives and stances. If I make an argument, it doesn’t matter if I frame it with “I argue” or not; it’s still my argument. From one perspective, then, using an “I” voice is simply more transparent about the subjectivity of the work.

The “I” voice is slightly less formal, although it can still have a place in academic writing. It can also feel quite personal, depending on the subject. Consider the difference between these two sentences:

While I recognize the potential value of a longer school day in improving test scores, I don’t agree that the benefits are worth the cost.

While a longer school day may improve test scores, the benefits aren’t worth the cost.

You can see how even minor changes like this have an impact on how they “sound” to the reader’s ear.