Message for the developers of Microsoft Word: no animated paperclip is ever going to tell me how to write. When it makes one of its silly suggestions I jab my finger at it, laugh, and sneeringly remind it that I, not it, possess the bachelor’s degree in English from a minor Welsh university.

On the few occasions the paperclip is right, it’s usually because I’ve unthinkingly written an unjustifiable passive sentence. In general, the passive voice makes copy less clear, although, like other “bad” habits (split infinitives, “-ly” adverbs, starting sentences with prepositions) it has its uses, too.

You’re using the passive voice if you make the main agent of a sentence its object rather than its subject. So, for example, in the sentence

The cat sat on the mat

(Original, eh?) the cat is the subject of the sentence because it is the agent carrying out the action described by the verb, “sat”. The mat, the passive recipient of the cat’s backside, is the object. The sentence, therefore, is active. To make it passive, we have to swap the subject and object around:

The mat is sat on by the cat

The mat, although it isn’t doing anything – in fact, it’s having something done to it – has been made the subject of the main sentence. A passive subject makes for a passive sentence. As you can see, in the passive version is clumsier than the active.

Cats, mats and the act of sitting make for a fairly obvious example, and you might be forgiven for thinking that such inelegance would be obvious as soon as you wrote it. You’d probably be right. Problems tend to crop up in longer sentences, when the subject and object may be far apart, and camouflaged by things like indirect objects and adverbial clauses. However, it’s in those kinds of situations that the passive can prove its worth. Consider the following two sentences. The first is in the active voice, the second in the passive:

Wendy will chair the meeting, in the Directors’ Lounge.

The meeting will be chaired by Wendy in the Directors’ Lounge.

Although superficially the meanings are identical – a meeting will take place, it will be chaired by Wendy, the location of the meeting is the Directors’ Lounge - the reader could interpret the two sentences differently. The first sentence puts the emphasis on Wendy as the subject. (Notice, also, that if you take out the comma, the sentence now suggests that this is only one of many meetings – powerful things, commas.)

The second, passive, sentence, puts the emphasis firmly on the meeting itself rather than on Wendy, suggesting it’s more important than she is. It’s a slight difference, but an important one.

So when you’re writing your copy, be aware of the difference between passive and active voices. The paperclip isn’t always right. Sometimes passives are useful for subtly shifting the emphasis within a sentence. Most of the time, however, our little aluminium friend is right on the money – so grit your teeth and follow its advice. Your copy will be more effective.