Question 1

What is passive voice and why should I avoid it?

Accepted Answer

Passive voice is a sentence construction where the subject receives the action instead of performing it. Active: 'The team finished the project.' Passive: 'The project was finished by the team.' Passive voice is weaker for four reasons: (1) It hides the doer — who is responsible becomes unclear; (2) It adds words — 'was finished by' vs 'finished'; (3) It reduces immediacy and energy in the writing; (4) It can feel evasive — politicians and bureaucrats use passive voice to avoid accountability. That said, passive voice has legitimate uses: when the doer is unknown ('The window was broken'), when the doer is irrelevant ('Emails will be sent at 9am'), or in formal scientific writing.

Question 2

What percentage of passive voice is too much?

Accepted Answer

Style guides recommend: web content and marketing copy: under 10% passive; business and professional writing: under 15% passive; academic writing: under 25% passive (passive is more accepted in formal registers). Microsoft Word's readability statistics flag anything over 10% passive as a potential issue. The Hemingway App targets 0–5% for highly readable writing. A passive score above 20% in persuasive or conversational writing is a reliable sign that the writing needs active-voice revision.

Question 3

How do I convert passive voice to active voice?

Accepted Answer

The fix is almost always: find who is doing the action, make them the subject, then restate. Formula: [Who] + [did/does] + [what]. 'The report was submitted by the team' → 'The team submitted the report.' 'Mistakes were made' → 'We made mistakes.' 'The product will be launched next quarter' → 'We launch the product next quarter.' If there is no clear doer (truly unknown), passive is acceptable. Otherwise, making the actor explicit almost always produces shorter, clearer sentences.

Question 4

Is passive voice always wrong?

Accepted Answer

No — passive voice has legitimate uses: (1) The doer is genuinely unknown ('The window was broken overnight'); (2) The doer is irrelevant to the point ('The vaccine was developed in 2020' — by whom is less important than the development); (3) You want to emphasise the object/recipient ('The employee was promoted' — the emphasis is on the employee, not who promoted them); (4) Scientific and technical writing, where the passive depersonalises results and focuses on what was observed rather than who observed it.

Writing type	Target passive %	Reason
Marketing / landing pages	Under 5%	Active voice = more persuasive and direct
Web content / blog posts	Under 10%	Readability — active voice is easier to scan
Business / professional	Under 15%	Some passive is acceptable in formal register
Academic / scientific	Under 25%	Passive is conventional for depersonalising results
Legal / regulatory	Under 20%	Passive often legally necessary (subject unknown)
Conversational / social	Under 5%	Passive sounds stilted in natural conversation

Passive Voice Detector

Passive score targets by writing type

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