How to Identify and Fix Passive Voice in Your Writing

What Is Passive Voice?

In an active sentence, the subject does the action: The dog bit the man. In a passive sentence, the subject receives the action: The man was bitten by the dog. The same event, different emphasis — and in the passive version, two extra words.

Passive voice uses a form of the verb "to be" (is, are, was, were, been, being) combined with a past participle (a verb ending in -ed, or an irregular form like known, written, given, done). The agent — whoever is doing the action — is either pushed to the end with "by" or removed entirely.

The "By Zombies" Test

The most reliable quick test: if you can add "by zombies" after the verb and the sentence still makes grammatical sense, it is passive.

Common Passive Constructions to Watch For

Regular -ed passives are the most common, but passive voice also appears with irregular past participles that do not end in -ed:

• is/was known, is/was written, is/was given
• is/was taken, is/was shown, is/was seen
• is/was told, is/was done, is/was built

These are harder to spot by eye because they do not follow the standard pattern. The Passive Voice Detector catches both regular and irregular forms automatically.

How to Rewrite Passive Voice

The rewrite formula is simple: identify who is doing the action, make them the subject, and use the active verb form.

When Passive Voice Is Acceptable

Passive voice is not always wrong. Use it deliberately when:

• The agent is unknown: "The window was broken overnight."
• The agent is irrelevant: "The samples were processed at 37°C." (scientific writing)
• You want to emphasise the recipient: "The award was given to a first-year student."

The key word is deliberately. Passive voice used by habit weakens your writing. Passive voice used by choice can serve a purpose.

How Much Passive Is Too Much?

Style guides vary, but a commonly cited guideline is to keep passive voice below 10–15% of your sentences. For marketing copy and journalism, the threshold is lower — closer to 5%. For scientific and academic writing, slightly higher rates are acceptable because the passive is a legitimate convention in those fields.

Use the Passive Voice Detector to count passive constructions in your text. More than three in a short piece is worth reviewing.

Passive voice in different document types

How much of it you should use varies significantly by context. In marketing copy and journalism, aim for under 5% — readers expect directness. In business reports, under 10% is a reasonable target. In scientific papers and academic dissertations, higher rates are normal because the conventions of those fields favour depersonalised, objective language.

For blog posts and online content, Google's own writing guidelines recommend active constructions where possible. Search engines have become sophisticated enough to treat sentence-level clarity as an indirect quality signal, because content that is easy to read tends to keep readers engaged longer. Writing in the active voice is one of the simplest ways to improve both readability and engagement at the same time.

If you are unsure how much you are using, the Passive Voice Detector counts every instance in your text and shows you the specific sentences where it appears — including irregular past participles like "known", "given" and "written" that basic checkers often miss.

Common passive voice mistakes in different writing types

Passive voice shows up in predictable places. Knowing where to look saves editing time.

In emails: "Your request has been received" is passive. "We received your request" is active and warmer. Business emails that use passive voice throughout can feel evasive — as though no one is taking responsibility. Switching to active voice makes the sender sound more accountable and direct.

In reports and documents: "It was decided that..." is one of the most common passive constructions in professional writing. It hides who made the decision. "The board decided..." is clearer, more transparent, and easier to follow up on.

In blog posts: Readers connect with a voice that sounds human. "The results were found to be significant" sounds like a press release. "We found significant results" sounds like a person. Active voice is warmer and more engaging for online content.

In academic writing: As noted earlier, passive voice is conventional in many academic fields. The key is to use it deliberately — for methods sections and when the agent is irrelevant — rather than defaulting to it throughout.

The Passive Voice Detector flags instances across all these contexts. Run it after your first draft and review each flagged sentence. Ask yourself: does the passive voice here serve a purpose, or is it just habit? If it is habit, rewrite it. If it serves a purpose, keep it.