Use the passive voice for flow

Readers learn the way Musk says you learn anything — as a tree, hanging each new leaf on a branch they already have. So a sentence flows when it leads with something familiar (the branch) before the new thing (the leaf); reverse it and the reader has to backtrack to find where the new idea attaches. Usually the active voice handles this fine. But every so often the active voice forces the new information to the front — and then the passive is the tool that fixes the flow.

How it works

The passive lets you move the old, familiar thing to the front of the sentence and push the new agent to the end, preserving the old-before-new order. The conversion is mechanical: move the goal (what receives the action) into the subject position; move the agent (what performs it) to the end, in a "by" phrase; then insert a form of to be and change the main verb to a past participle. "Millions of people use it" becomes "it is used by millions of people" — and if "it" is the familiar thing the paragraph is about, that version flows where the active one jars. Strunk and White say kill the passive; a novelist who got readers through a 1,200-page book used it in maybe five percent of sentences, exactly where flow demanded.

Why it matters

The blanket rule "never use the passive" is a folk rule that, followed literally, breaks cohesion — it forces the active voice even when the active voice lands the new information first and makes the reader leap. The passive isn't weak; it's a cohesion tool. Reserved for the ~5% of sentences where it restores old-before-new order, it's the difference between prose that flows and prose that's grammatically "correct" but choppy.

Try it

1. When a sentence feels choppy, check its order: is it leading with new information the reader can't yet place?
2. If the active voice forces the new thing first, convert: goal to subject, agent to a "by" phrase, verb to is/was + past participle.
3. Keep it rare — most sentences should stay active; use the passive only where it repairs the flow.

Common pitfalls

Reaching for the passive out of habit or to sound official, which is the abuse the "avoid passive" rule was built to stop. And converting a sentence to passive when the agent is the old information — then you've put new before old and made the flow worse, not better.

Probably not more than 5% of sentences really need to be in the passive voice.

WILLIAM · EXACTLY HOW TO MAKE YOUR WRITING FLOW · 2025

The passive isn't a weakness to purge. It's the tool that puts old before new when the active voice won't.

Drawn from

• William, Exactly How to Make Your Writing Flow (Writer Science, 2025).
• Related: Chain old information to new, Characters as subjects, actions as verbs, Put the idea where the reader expects it.