Active vs. Passive Voice
Active and passive voice describe two different ways of arranging who does what to whom in a sentence: active voice puts the doer of the action in the subject position (The committee approved the plan), while passive voice puts the receiver of the action there instead, often pushing the doer to the sentence's end or dropping it entirely (The plan was approved by the committee, or simply The plan was approved).
How to spot passive voice
Passive voice always uses a form of 'to be' (is, was, were, has been, will be) plus a past participle: The report was written. The window was broken. A useful diagnostic phrase, borrowed from writing instructors, is to check whether you can add 'by zombies' after the verb and have it still make grammatical sense: 'The report was written by zombies' works grammatically (even if it's silly), confirming passive voice, while 'The committee approved by zombies' does not work the same way, confirming active voice.
Why active voice is usually recommended
Active voice tends to produce more direct, more concise, and more vivid prose, because it puts the responsible actor front and center rather than deferring or hiding it: The board rejected the proposal is shorter and clearer than The proposal was rejected by the board, and dramatically clearer than the fully passive The proposal was rejected, which doesn't even say who did the rejecting. Most style guides for business, journalism, and general nonfiction recommend active voice as the default for exactly this reason — it usually communicates the same information with fewer words and less ambiguity about responsibility.
When passive voice is the better choice
Passive voice is genuinely useful, not just tolerable, in several specific situations: when the doer of the action is unknown, irrelevant, or intentionally being de-emphasized (The window was broken sometime last night — nobody knows who did it); when the receiver of the action is simply more important to the sentence's focus than the doer (The suspect was arrested at 3 a.m., where the arrest matters more than which specific officer made it); and in scientific writing, where the traditional convention emphasizes the procedure or result rather than the researcher performing it (The samples were heated to 200 degrees).
Passive voice and evasion of responsibility
Because passive voice can omit the actor entirely, it's sometimes used, consciously or not, to blur accountability: Mistakes were made is a famously criticized example from political and corporate communication, precisely because it describes an action without naming who performed it, letting the speaker avoid directly claiming responsibility. Recognizing this pattern is useful both for writers, who should be deliberate about when omitting the actor is genuinely appropriate versus evasive, and for readers, who should notice when a passive construction is quietly doing work to obscure who's responsible for something.
The myth that passive voice is always wrong
Some writing advice overcorrects into treating passive voice as an outright grammatical error to be eliminated everywhere, which goes too far — passive voice is a fully grammatical, often stylistically appropriate construction, not a mistake. The legitimate critique isn't that passive voice is wrong, but that it's frequently overused in contexts where active voice would be clearer, more concise, and more direct, particularly in bureaucratic, academic, and corporate writing that leans on it as a way to sound formal or to soften direct claims.
Converting passive to active
To convert a passive sentence to active voice, identify who or what is actually performing the action (even if the passive sentence doesn't state it, sometimes it must be supplied or inferred), then make that actor the sentence's subject and put the verb in its ordinary active form: The proposal was rejected by the board becomes The board rejected the proposal. When the actor genuinely isn't known or stated, converting to active voice may require rephrasing more substantially or simply isn't possible without adding information the original sentence didn't have.
Passive voice in specific genres and disciplines
Scientific and technical writing has traditionally favored passive voice heavily, on the theory that it keeps the focus on the experiment or process rather than the individual researcher (The solution was titrated rather than I titrated the solution). This convention has shifted somewhat in recent decades, with many journals now actively encouraging more active-voice writing for clarity and directness, though passive voice remains common and accepted in methods sections and formal scientific prose more broadly.
A practical editing habit
When reviewing a draft, flag every instance of 'to be' plus a past participle and ask two questions: is the actor named, and does naming (or renaming) the actor as the subject make the sentence clearer and more direct? If the answer to both is yes, converting to active voice is usually a worthwhile edit; if the passive construction is deliberately de-emphasizing an unimportant or unknown actor, it can often stay exactly as written.
Passive voice and legal or official writing
Legal contracts, regulations, and official notices often favor passive voice, partly out of long-standing convention and partly because legal drafting sometimes wants to describe an obligation or prohibition without specifying exactly who enforces or performs it: Payment must be received by the due date rather than naming a specific party as the receiver. This convention is heavily criticized by modern plain-language writing advocates, who argue that legal and government writing would be far more accessible to ordinary readers if it relied more on direct, active-voice construction.
A note on the passive voice and headlines
News headlines sometimes use passive voice specifically to lead with the more newsworthy element — the victim, the event, the outcome — rather than the actor: Bridge Closed After Storm Damage leads with the bridge (the newsworthy subject) rather than with whichever agency ordered the closure, which would be the natural active-voice subject. This is a deliberate editorial choice about emphasis, not a stylistic lapse, and it illustrates one of the clearest legitimate uses of passive voice in professional writing.
Distinguishing passive voice from other 'weak' verb constructions
Passive voice is sometimes confused with other verb patterns that also feel indirect or wordy but aren't grammatically passive at all, such as nominalizations (turning a verb into a noun: make a decision instead of decide) or heavy reliance on 'there is/there are' openers. These constructions share passive voice's tendency toward wordiness and reduced directness, but they're structurally distinct — the by-zombies test specifically identifies true passive voice, while these other patterns need to be recognized separately as their own kind of weak, indirect phrasing.
Balancing active and passive across a longer piece of writing
Good prose rarely uses one voice exclusively; the most effective writing typically defaults to active voice for clarity and directness while deliberately reaching for passive voice in the specific moments described above — an unknown actor, a de-emphasized actor, or a genre convention that calls for it. Reviewing a finished draft for an overwhelming, undifferentiated reliance on passive constructions throughout, rather than banning passive voice outright, is the more useful editorial habit.
Why writing instructors emphasize this distinction so heavily
Because overreliance on passive voice is one of the most common and most fixable weaknesses in unpolished first-draft writing — especially in academic, corporate, and bureaucratic contexts — writing instruction tends to spend disproportionate time on the active/passive distinction relative to how often it actually causes real communication problems. This emphasis is generally well placed as craft advice, even though, as covered above, passive voice itself is never actually a grammar error, only sometimes a less effective stylistic choice.
Recognizing passive voice without a form of 'to be'
A less common passive construction uses 'get' instead of 'to be': The window got broken. This 'get-passive' is more informal and conversational than the standard be-passive, but it follows the identical logic — the subject is receiving the action rather than performing it — and the same by-zombies test still applies to confirm it.
Frequently asked questions
Is passive voice grammatically incorrect?
No — it's a fully grammatical construction with legitimate, common uses. The common writing advice to 'avoid passive voice' is really a style preference for clarity and directness, not a statement that passive voice breaks any grammar rule.
How can I tell if a sentence is passive without knowing formal grammar terms?
Check for a form of 'to be' (is, was, were, been, being) followed by a past-tense-looking verb form, and try adding 'by someone' or 'by zombies' after it — if that addition makes grammatical sense, the sentence is passive.
Do grammar checkers reliably flag passive voice?
Most flag it reasonably well, since the construction has a fairly consistent structural pattern, but they generally can't judge whether a specific passive sentence is a stylistic problem or an appropriate choice — that judgment call still requires a human reader weighing context.
Is the get-passive considered standard English?
It's widely used and understood, but it carries a more casual register than the standard be-passive and is generally avoided in formal writing in favor of either the be-passive or an active-voice rephrasing.