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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. The agent — whoever is doing the action — is either pushed to the end with "by" or removed entirely.
The most reliable quick test: if you can add "by zombies" after the verb and the sentence still makes grammatical sense, it is passive.
Identify who is doing the action, make them the subject, and use the active verb form.
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"), or you want to emphasise the recipient ("The award was given to a first-year student"). The key word is deliberately.
Keep passive voice below 10–15% of your sentences. For marketing copy and journalism, the threshold is closer to 5%. For scientific and academic writing, slightly higher rates are acceptable.
In emails: "Your request has been received" is passive. "We received your request" is active and warmer.
In reports: "It was decided that..." hides who made the decision. "The board decided..." is clearer and more transparent.
In blog posts: Active voice sounds more human. "We found significant results" beats "The results were found to be significant."
Regular -ed passives are the most common, but passive voice also appears with irregular past participles that do not end in -ed. These include constructions with "known", "written", "given", "taken", "shown", "seen", "told", "done", and "built". These are harder to spot by eye because they do not follow the standard pattern. The detector above catches both regular and irregular forms automatically.
How much passive voice you should use varies significantly by context. In marketing copy and journalism, aim for under 5% — readers expect directness, and passive constructions slow the pace of persuasive writing. 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 where the agent is often irrelevant.
For blog posts and online content, active constructions are strongly preferred. 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 active voice is one of the simplest ways to improve both readability and engagement at the same 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 when accountability matters.
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 sharing useful information. Active voice is warmer and more engaging for any online content.
In academic writing: Passive voice is conventional in many academic fields. The key is to use it deliberately — for methods sections and when the agent is genuinely irrelevant — rather than defaulting to it throughout every section of a paper.
After converting passive constructions to active voice, use the text compare tool to verify your changes. Paste your original paragraph into Panel A and the revised version into Panel B — the diff shows exactly which words changed.
What counts as passive voice? A sentence is passive when the subject receives the action instead of performing it. The grammatical structure is typically: a form of "to be" (is, are, was, were, been, being, be) followed by a past participle (written, made, taken, shown, etc.). "The report was written by the team" is passive because "the report" receives the action of writing. "The team wrote the report" is active because "the team" performs the action. The "by zombies" test is a reliable way to identify passive constructions — if you can add "by zombies" after the verb and the sentence still makes sense, it is passive.
Is passive voice always wrong? No. Passive voice is grammatically correct and useful in specific situations: when the agent is unknown ("The window was broken overnight"), irrelevant ("The samples were processed at 37°C"), or when you want to emphasise the recipient ("The award was given to a first-year student"). The problem is habitual passive voice — using it by default rather than deliberately. If more than 10–15% of your sentences are passive, the writing will feel indirect, wordy, and less engaging.
How can I tell if a sentence is passive without a tool? The most reliable method is the "by zombies" test. Take the verb phrase, add "by zombies" after it, and check if the sentence still makes grammatical sense. "The decision was made [by zombies]" — yes, that works, so it is passive. "Management made the decision [by zombies]" — no, that is nonsense, so it is active. This test catches both regular -ed passives and irregular past participles.
Why does the detector find fewer instances than other tools? The detector uses a curated list of irregular past participles and standard -ed forms. Some tools use broader patterns that generate more false positives — flagging constructions that look passive grammatically but function as adjectives or descriptive phrases in context. For example, "She was excited about the results" uses "was excited", but "excited" here is an adjective describing a state, not a passive construction. The detector prioritises accuracy over volume.
For detailed walkthroughs with more examples, see our guides How to Identify and Fix Passive Voice and Active vs Passive Voice Examples.