Robert Starr is a professional writer/editor with several published books and a degree in journalism. He's brought 20 years of experience in the craft to his own on line writing/editing service. You can reach him at robstarr
If you've ever had the occasion to use a professional writer for any of your web content management needs, then you've more than likely heard them talking about how important it is to use the active voice. It's true. Knowing how to fashion the words properly makes all the difference between just attracting prospects to your site and keeping them there. In short, the active voice is more immediate. It gets to the heart of the matter straight away since it uses fewer words.
Look at the whole thing this way. If you want to plug in a generator that's going to light up the front of your store so that everyone passing by will see it, you'll want to plug it in directly to the source and not take the chance that something might go wrong by using an extension cord, right? Well, using the active voice for web content management is a lot like plugging directly into the current. Think of it as taking the shortest route possible for your advertising copy. There's generally a quick way to check if the sentences that you're writing fall into the active voice category and that's by seeing if they fall into the Subject Verb Object pattern.
The question might still remain for the person wanting to attain professional writer status,why can't I write in the passive voice? I've read many examples and they all make sense. To be fair, they do. Some of the most intelligent writers cling to the passive voice since complex thoughts translated onto the page or monitor often wind up written that way. Still, if you take the time to register your thoughts in the active voice, your readers will have a much easier time following along, and that's what the real essence of web content management is all about.
If you're still a little confused about the differences between the passive voice and the active voice, some common examples might help. We've all read the familiar sentence 'The cow jumped over the moon.' It might be a little easier to understand the passive voice and how if affects the way we process sentences when we read the same sentence in a passive way as 'The moon was jumped over by the cow.'
In the area of web content management where you've only got seconds to capture a web surfer's attention, it's critical that you lead with the sentences that will have the best impact and those are always the ones with the active voice.
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