Writing in the active voice is easier for your reader to understand.
It also keeps them reading – which is exactly what you want when it comes to writing medical content.
The active voice involves you writing about someone doing something.
And it does not matter whether it’s the past or present tense.
For example look at this sentence: You can collect your prescription tomorrow.
This sentence tells the reader that they can collect something.
It’s also useful to note that it’s written in future tense and speaks positively, as well as giving an action that they can expect to do.
Let’s compare this to the passive voice, which tends to avoid speaking directly to the reader and treats them more like an object.
For example, this is the same sentence but in the passive voice: Your prescription can be collected tomorrow.
Notice how this sounds much less inviting and almost sounds like a demand.
And instead of having one action (verb) in the sentence, there are now 2. There’s the verb ‘to be’ and ‘to collect’.
This makes it sound confusing and hard to read or remember.
Happy writing 🙂
Virginia Chachati 