WritersLockPassive voice is not an error
A passive clause is a form of be plus a past participle, sometimes with a by phrase naming who did it: the report was reviewed by the committee. It is ordinary, correct English. The question is never whether a passive is allowed. It is whether this passive is doing a job.
Five jobs the passive does well
- The actor is unknown. The window was broken sometime overnight. The active version has to invent a culprit.
- The actor is irrelevant or obvious. She was arrested on Tuesday. Nobody needs the officer's name.
- The thing acted on is the topic. English likes the topic in subject position. If the paragraph is about the report, keep the report at the front.
- The field expects it. Methods sections foreground the procedure rather than the researcher, and many journals still expect that.
- Naming the party is itself a decision. Diplomatic, legal and institutional writing suppress agents deliberately.
One good reason to look at your own passives
Leaving the actor out is also how people avoid responsibility.Mistakes were made is the famous example. If your sentence hides who did something and you know who did it, that is worth a second look — not because the grammar is wrong, but because the choice might be.
Turning a passive into an active, when you want to
- Find the actor, usually in the by phrase.
- Put the actor in front, fixing pronoun case (by him → he).
- Make the participle a simple past verb; move the old subject after it.
The report was reviewed by the committee. →The committee reviewed the report.
If no actor is named, stop. You would have to decide who did it, and if you do not know or should not say, the passive is the right choice.
Free to copy and hand out. Interactive version: getwriterslock.com/tools/passive-voice-checker — free, no signup, and it runs in the browser without uploading anything.