Technical Writing - When Should You Use the Passive Voice in a Technical Document?

Here is a rule pounded into every writer's head by all writing instructors: avoid the passive voice like the plague and use active voice whenever possible. That's good advice indeed but not the best within the context of technical writing.

Here are some situations in which it is perfectly all right to use passive voice.
Use passive voice in these 6 situations when you:

1) Want to ignore the agent of action because it does not matter.
Example: "The cover of the Annual Report has been torn." "That street has been renamed."
2) Want to hide the identity of the agent since that knowledge may give rise to an awkward situation or an uncomfortable accusation. Such use softens the severity of the situation by masking the identity of the culprit.

Example: "The wrong wire was connected to the power outlet." "All security cameras have been removed from the most sensitive areas of the nuclear plant."

3) Want to maintain the thematic unity between two consecutive sentences.
Example: "The server is not stable. It can be brought down by a single spike in the system load."
4) Want to emphasize the agent by mentioning it at the end of the sentence:
Example: "The circuit was overheated due to the failure of the 10K resistor."
5) Are not sure who the agent is:

Example: "This project has to be finished by March 5th." "The Documentation Plan has to be approved before we can design the templates."

6) Want to stress an action or an outcome:
Example: "Our research budget has been decimated." "They've been had!" "These reports have been altered."

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