The Gift of Active Voice

As we enter the holiday break, I am feebly searching to make connections between the season and grant development. This week, I wanted to return to a grant writing pitfall that is one of the most common - using the passive voice. And, offer you the gift of an active voice. :)

Many PIs have been trained to do their writing in the passive, third-person voice rather than the active, first-person voice. As a quick reminder, here's the difference:

Passive, third-person: The research will be conducted by the research team.

Active, first-person: We will conduct the research.

Researchers are often taught to use the passive, third-person in both their manuscripts and grant proposals because it sounds more objective. It's not that you think something is happening, it's that a thought has been considered, like the thought is derived from the ether.

Writing in the active, first-person in your grant proposals is a better choice for a couple of reasons: it is easier to read and it cuts out extra words.

Now, I don't mean to pick on anybody. I recently got a review on a manuscript that critiqued my abrupt switch to the third person in discussing my methods. I reported my interview protocol in first-person, active voice and then stated, "the interviews were transcribed." Because I didn't transcribe the interviews myself, I just removed the subject from the sentence.

It is true that most proposals I review are not completely in passive voice. They often start off in active, first-person voice and then slip into passive a couple paragraphs in and proceed to move back and forth between the two. So, when I am giving feedback, I'm often on a hunt to find those little slips into the passive. Below, are some of the clues that usually make those passive slips stand out.

• will be collected
• can be assessed
• was determined
• It is plausible that
• It has previously been shown
• less is known

These phrases tend to be in passive and third-person sentences. To correct them, you'll generally switch the order of the object and subject of the sentence from their inverted position and identify the subject if it's been removed. Here's an example.

Passive, third-person: The samples will be collected by the team. Or The samples will be collected.

In this first sentence, "samples" are the object and "team" is the subject. In the second, the subject is missing altogether. To correct this, revise to the following.

Active, first-person: We will collect the samples.

Again, we identify the subject, "we" and we flip the subject and object so that we begin with the subject.

By looking out and correcting these slips in your grant writing, you'll find yourself writing a proposal that is much easier to read and your reviewers will thank you for it - it's a gift after all!

Resources:

Use the Active Voice - the University of Wisconsin Writing Center

How to Effectively Use Active and Passive Voice in Research Writing - editage insights