How to use this tool
- Paste your text into the box above.
- Review each flagged sentence, with the passive construction highlighted in amber.
- Rewrite the ones where an active version genuinely reads better. Not every flag needs a fix.
How to spot passive voice yourself
The reliable test: look for a form of "to be" (am, is, are, was, were, been, being) followed by a past participle, a verb usually ending in -ed or -en. "Was written," "is being reviewed," "have been announced" are all passive constructions built from that pattern.
A second, more informal test that catches the same pattern: add "by zombies" to the end of the sentence. If it still makes grammatical sense, the sentence is passive. "The decision was made by zombies" works. "The team made the decision by zombies" doesn't, which confirms the second version is active.
Why passive voice weakens writing
Passive constructions hide the actor. "Mistakes were made" never says who made them. That vagueness sometimes serves a real purpose (more on that below), but most of the time it just leaves the reader working harder to figure out who's responsible for what.
Passive sentences also tend to run longer than their active equivalents, since the true subject gets pushed to the end of the sentence or dropped entirely. "The report was reviewed by management" (6 words after the verb) becomes "Management reviewed the report" (3 words) once you flip it, with nothing lost.
Examples: passive to active
| Passive | Active |
|---|---|
| The proposal was approved by the board. | The board approved the proposal. |
| Mistakes were made. | The team made mistakes. |
| The email was sent by my boss. | My boss sent the email. |
| The report has been reviewed by management. | Management reviewed the report. |
| It was decided that the project would be cancelled. | The board cancelled the project. |
The pattern in every fix is the same: find who's actually performing the action (often hiding after "by," or missing entirely), move them to the front of the sentence, and replace the "was/were + participle" construction with a direct verb.
When passive voice is the right choice
Passive voice isn't a mistake to eliminate on sight. It's a tool with real uses:
- When the actor is genuinely unknown or irrelevant. "The window was broken sometime overnight" works fine if you don't know who did it.
- When you want to emphasize the result over the actor. Scientific and academic writing often favors passive for exactly this reason.
- When naming the actor would be awkward, redundant, or diplomatically unwise. "Errors were introduced during the migration" can read better than assigning individual blame in a postmortem document.
The goal isn't zero passive voice. It's noticing where you've used it out of habit rather than choice, and fixing the sentences where an active rewrite genuinely reads better.