I’ve always seen recommendations to avoid passive voice in writing. However, when I encounter passive voice it doesn’t bother me. It also is one of my more frequent writing mistakes. Is this still considered bad practice?
The one exception is writing where accessibility is key. Apparently there is objective evidence that EAL and lower-ability native speakers may find it confusing to parse, but if you're instead writing "to entertain" (in a very broad sense), or for a high-ability audience, this likely is not relevant
The other justifications like "active voice strikes the object" just sound like standard bad linguistics and getting hung up on the name, rather than any valid critique
As for "it's used to shirk responsibility" ("mistakes were made") - that's plenty easy to do in active voice ("experts say x"). Shiftiness is a function of semantic content (or lack thereof) not grammar, and people generally aren't stupid enough to not notice you dodging just because you did it in passive
But if you write in passive voice for no particular reason, they may think you are when you weren't trying to.
Though I try to use primarily active voice because it helps me save on word/page count when I'm trying to submit papers to conferences.
Advice to avoid passive voice comes from a variety of reasons, but perhaps the most charitable (and I think useful) view would be:
* In technical writing, you might have pick up passive voice because of misguided advice to use avoid "I" and "we". This naturally leads you to using passive voice all over the place. This makes the writing "seem more objective", but is really just the veneer of objectivity. And in some ways is the polar opposite of the advice to always avoid passive voice. English has both voices - use them both. If nothing else (and all other things were equal), active voice tends to be more concise - as you have noted - which is a true benefit for technical writing.
* Passive voice is one of tools employed when weaseling or obfuscating (see the infamous "mistakes were made"). Advice to avoid the passive voice is either nudging you to either... just be more honest (don't weasel!), or to be more clever in your weaseling (because everyone knows the trick...)
* Because use of passive voice in more mundane/banal communication is so common (or seemingly so common), there was a perception that people were just defaulting in the passive because that's what government officials, or companies or whatever talked like. And so the advice was pushback. Reminding you that you don't have to speak or write like a prepared government speech or press release.
Try this: "Mistakes were made."
Look at those headlines about Kennedy's death: https://www.manisteenews.com/news/slideshow/10-front-pages-f... Most of these headlines are passive, because the topic of interest isn't the (unknown) murderer, or the bullets themselves, but the victim.
"Kennedy assassinated, Connally seriously wounded by shots" is way stronger than "somebody assassinated Kennedy, shots seriously wounded Connally". Ditto with "Kennedy to be buried in Arlington", which is way better than "a person will bury Kennedy in Arlington".