As a student or professional writer, one of the keys to keeping the reader engaged from beginning to end is to master the skill of using an active voice in your writing. And although it doesn’t take rocket science to do it, it takes a single sneaky word to expose your work to passive voice misuse. Left unchecked, passive voice use has the potential to slaughter the reader’s interest, more than even a glaring typo error.
If you came here looking for answers on how to fix passive voice, you’re in luck. In this article, we’re going to try and understand what passive voice misuse is, how to identify passive voice misuse, as well guide you on how to get rid of passive voice misuse. Indeed, at the tail end of this guide, we are also going to reveal how using an online passive voice misuse checker can help in all of that.
What Is Passive Voice Misuse?
Passive voice construction in a sentence means that the subject is receiving action from the verb instead of the other way round. Although passive voice use isn’t always wrong, it can make your sentences appear wordy and interfere with the logical flow.
For example:
Passive: The car was chased by the dog. Active: The dog chased the car.
Passive: The movie will be watched by us tonight. Active: We will watch the movie tonight.
Scenarios That Don’t Require You to Use a Passive Voice Misuse Checker
The mere fact that passive voice use is discouraged does not make it inherently bad for your writing. Indeed at the beginning of this article, we said, left unchecked, it can damage readability and poke holes in the reader’s interest.
Below are some exceptional circumstances when passive voice is allowed including:
- When the subject is not known. Example: ‘We don’t know who did it, but someone broke into our house.’ Instead of: ‘We don’t know who did it, but our house was broken into by someone.’
- 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: ‘The minister was sworn in on a cold afternoon.’ Instead of: ‘ In a cold afternoon is when the minister was sworn in.’
- When the subject has been mentioned before. Example: ‘Mrs. Anne is my English professor. Grammar rules will be discussed in our next lesson.’ Instead of: ‘Mrs. Anne is my English teacher. In our next lesson, she will be discussing grammar rules.’
- 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 study findings. Example: Fifty volunteers were requested to fill in the survey forms’. Instead of: ‘I requested fifty volunteers to fill in the survey forms.’
How to Spot Passive Voice Misuse
According to Google trends, ‘How did I misuse passive voice,’ ‘how do you correct passive voice misuse,’ ‘how to fix passive voice misuse,’ and ‘find passive voice misuse in my paper’ are some of the most commonly searched phrases on the search engine.
If you’ve been asking yourself the same questions, we have created a brief guide on how to fix passive voice.
- Read your work out load and manually revise. Changing from passive voice to active voice is easier said than done. But with dedication and time on your side, you can catch some of the mistakes. For this, you need to read out your work loudly and manually revise all the sentences that overlook the subject’s actions and shifting the focus from the object back to the subject. You can also check instances where past participles like “is/was/were come before the verb.
- Hire a professional editor or use online tool. If you don’t have the time to comb through your work identifying passive misuse, you can hire a professional editor or look for a friend to help. Unfortunately, hiring a professional editor doesn’t come cheap. And that leaves you with one more option: using an online passive voice misuse fixer. Not only are online passive voice checkers easy to use, but they’re also fast and readily available, making them ideal for students and professional writers alike.
How Our Passive Voice Misuse Finder Can Help
Our passive voice detector has a wide range of features and capabilities, making it all-rounded proofreading and revising tool. Some of the grammar problems it can help solve include;
- Structural and stylistic errors. On top of helping identify passive voice misuse, our tool will also come in handy in helping offer structural and stylistic suggestions, ultimately improving the eloquence and logical flow of your texts.
- Spelling and grammar. Our passive voice misuse corrector is powered by the latest AI, NLP technology, and English grammar rules, letting you easily identify spelling and grammatical errors in your texts, as well as offer the most appropriate suggestions.
- Plagiarism check. Using our tool, you can also check the originality of your texts by searching and comparing them against millions of already published work on the internet.
What Makes Our Passive Voice Misuse Corrector Unique?
- 100% free. You get to check passive voice misuse for free, making it ideal for students and professional writers working on a tight budget.
- 24/7 availability. Our tool is cloud-hosted, which makes it accessible to all irrespective of time and geographical location.
- High character limit. Unlike most tools that require you to break your documents into small sub-documents, our active and passive voice can handle up to 1000 words at a go.
- No download required. Our passive voice misuse checker is accessible via your browser, and you don’t need to download any apps or create an account.
Using passive voice in your writing is technically not wrong, especially when it comes to formal writing, and sometimes in academic papers. With that said, however, staying on the active side of writing as much as possible is important, as not only helps keep your readers engaged but also gives your texts a better logical flow. And with the help of our passive voice misuse checker, you shouldn’t have a problem ensuring your nouns and verbs are in agreement and in the right place, as well as maintaining an active voice every time you write. It is free to use, available 24/7, and requires no download.
Ensure your writing is at its best by getting rid of passive voice misuse using our helpful tool today!
