As a student or professional writer, using an active voice in your writing helps keep the readers engaged, as well as give your texts preciseness and distinctiveness. In fact, English professionals have argued that passive voice can be more detrimental to your writing compared to even the silliest typo errors. And although it’s not necessarily bad to use passive voice, you risk rendering your work bland and indirect. With the help of an online passive voice detector, however, you can easily identify and switch from passive to active voice. In this article, we’re going to look at what passive voice is in grammar, how to eliminate passive voice in your writing, and scenarios where it is appropriate to use passive voice.
What Is Passive Voice in Grammar?
Basically, an active sentence contains both a subject and an action, meaning the reader can easily create a distinction between the person or an object performing a certain action from the action itself. Simply put, the subject is placed before the action. Passive voice, on the other hand, tends to overshadow the subject by putting the action before the subject.
Take a look at the following examples:
Passive voice:The car was chased by the dog.
Active voice: The dog chased the car.
Passive voice: The food was eaten by dad.
Active voice: Dad ate the food.
Passive voice: The window was shut by her.
Active voice: She shut the window.
Passive voice: The accident was caused by Jane.
Active voice: Jane caused the accident.
Even if you have the most basic English knowledge, you can tell that passive voice makes the sentences illogical and hard to read. As earlier said, however, there are instances where you’re allowed to use passive voice. Let’s take a look at some of them.
When Is It Ideal to Use Passive Voice in Your Writing?
- When the subject is unknown: Example: ‘We don’t know who fell, but there was a loud scream.’ Instead of: ‘We don’t know who fell, but someone was screaming out loud.’
- When the reader already knows the subject: Example: ‘He had been instructed to submit the assignment by noon.’ Instead of: ‘His professor had instructed him to submit the assignment by noon.’
- When the subject is irrelevant: Example: ‘Are you hungry?’ ‘No, I have already eaten.’ Instead of: ‘Are you hungry?’ ‘No thanks, I already ate at the restaurant.’
- When the subject has been specified before: Example: ‘Mrs. Cook is my Physics teacher. The Law of Physics will be discussed in our next lesson.’ Instead of: ‘Mrs. Cook is my Physics teacher. She will be discussing the Laws of Physics in our next lesson.’
- When making statements that provide information that the general public can easily access but doesn’t have a subject: Example: ‘All her memoirs can be found in the National Library.’ Instead of: ‘All memoirs about her can be found in the National Library.’
- In formal writing and certain academic contexts: To stay removed from the official findings of a formal research paper, a writer is allowed to use passive voice. Example: Twenty volunteers were asked to fill in the survey forms’. Instead of: ‘I asked twenty volunteers to fill in the survey forms.’, ‘We asked twenty volunteers to fill in the survey forms.’
As you can see, there are exceptional circumstances where passive voice use is allowed. But how do you know when? In the next section, we’re going to see how you can check for passive voice to determine whether it’s correctly used.
How to Check for Passive Voice Misuse
‘How to replace passive voice’, ‘how to fix passive voice in an essay,’ and ‘how to fix passive voice sentences’ are some of the most searched phrases on Google and other search engines. And if one were to take an educated stab in the dark, chances are you’re reading this because you searched for either of the phrases or all of them. Generally, there are several to check for passive voice misuse. The first and the most obvious one is manually combing through your work identifying instances where you’ve placed the action before the subject.
Along with that, you can try mastering all the rules of correct passive use as highlighted above. The only problem with that is that it can be time-consuming, plus it is hard to identify passive voice construction in long and complex sentences. In this case, you may opt for a passive voice corrector. Basically, it is an online tool that utilizes AI, NLP technology, and English-based rules to identify passive voice and offer the most appropriate suggestion.
Benefits of an Online Passive Voice Generator
If you’ve been looking for an efficient way of how to remove passive voice, here are some of the benefits of using an online passive voice generator:
- Saves time. If you’ve ever tried manually editing a long essay or a piece of article, you know it can be time-consuming. Worse still, you’re not guaranteed that you’ll be able to catch all the sneaky passive construction mistakes. With the help of an online passive voice tester, identifying passive voice in your texts becomes a piece of cake.
- Safe. A passive sentences checker is safe in the sense that your information is not saved in the local servers, reducing the chances of someone plagiarising it.
- Available 24/7. Unlike hiring a human editor who is limited by time constraints, using an online tool allows you to detect passive voice in your work anytime and from anywhere. This way, you can dedicate your spare time towards researching or any other important tasks.
- 100% free. We all know that hiring a professional editor does not come cheap, especially if you’re a student. And if you can, you still have to endure the back and forth with the editor. Using a fix passive voice tool is not only free but the results are almost instantaneous.
Why You Should Consider Using Passive Voice Corrector
There are hundreds and possibly thousands of online tools for getting rid of passive voice. However, not all of them are created equal. Our passive sentence checker is 100% free, available 24/7, safe, and has faster processing speeds. But perhaps what sets it apart from the rest is its versatility.
Here are some of its functionalities:
- Structural suggestions. Our tool is powered by the latest AI, NLP technology, and English grammar rules to help you construct sentences in the most optimal way, including the proper passive voice and comma.
- Style improvements. Our active voice detector also offers stylistic modifications, which help improve the logical flow and eloquence of your texts.
- Spelling and grammar. Along with offering structural and style suggestions, our passive voice remover looks for spelling mistakes and grammatically incorrect phrases in your work and offers the most appropriate suggestions. Still, it also features a built-in Thesaurus, which helps find the best alternate phrases and words within the context of your writing.
- Sentence rewriting. This is an experimental feature intended to help you access different ways to rewrite your sentences and add fluency to your writing.
- Plagiarism check. You can also check the originality of your texts by searching and comparing them to millions of publicly available texts already published on the internet.
How to Use Passive to Active Voice Converter
Using our passive voice analyzer is a simple and straightforward process.
- Start by visiting our website and paste your content into the empty dialog box. You can also choose to type directly.
- Next, click on the ‘Check’ button and the tool will employ its AI algorithms and NLP technology to break down your text into individual sentences to identify passive voice construction.
- In less than 10 seconds, the passive writing checker will highlight all mistakes and make the most appropriate suggestions. It will also catch other grammar and syntax that could cause issues.
- Make the corrections as suggested by the passive to active voice converter or as you may deem necessary.
- Copy your text and paste it back to the source document.
If you’re a student or professional writer looking to elevate the logical flow and eloquence of their writing, you should try as much as possible to get rid of passive voice in your texts. Unfortunately, this can be challenging, especially if you have limited knowledge of passive and active voice use, as well as how the different parts of a sentence function. With the help of our passive voice translator, however, you can easily pinpoint passive voice misuse in your texts and make corrections beforehand. It is accurate, 100% free, easy to use, and versatile enough to handle any type of text you want to revise and proofread, making it ideal for students, professional and amateur writers.
If you’re tired of spending days manually proofreading and revising your work, try our passive text checker today and make your texts shine!
