Pros and Cons of Using Passive Voice in Sentences

Most students and beginning writers are told that using passive voice is bad writing. However, before you employ a passive voice misuse corrector to change every sentence in your paper to active voice, you should know that there are times when using passive voice is acceptable and when active to passive voice converter online can be helpful.

Some of the pros of using passive voice include:

• When the subject is unknown. If the person/thing performing the action isn’t known the use of passive voice is appropriate.
• To emphasize the object. The subject is the person or thing performing the action and the object is the person/thing the action is performed on. When you want to emphasize the object, using the passive voice is acceptable.
• To emphasize the action. Passive voice may be used when the writer wants the focus to be on the action performed rather than who or what performed the action
• To conceal the subject. There may be times when you find it desirable to hide the subject performing the action such as when you want to avoid placing blame.

Using passive voice can also have negative effects on your writing. The major cons of using passive voice are:

• Less concise. It usually takes more words to say something in passive voice than it does in active voice.
• Harder to understand. Sentences written in passive voice can be harder to understand as it is more difficult to identify the subject plus more words are being used.
• More difficult to connect to the reader. Using passive voice can distance the reader from what you are trying to say and the message may be more difficult to understand. Typically you want to engage the reader.

While there are times when using passive voice is appropriate you should know how to switch from passive to active voice. A passive or active voice checker and convert passive voice to active voice tool can be a valuable tool when trying to determine which voice you should be writing in.

Basic Rules for Correcting Passive Voice Misuse

There are 3 parts to fixing passive voice misuse. First is identifying passive voice in sentences. Secondly when passive voice is identified you must evaluate the sentence to determine if it is being used appropriately. Finally if misuse is determined you must know how to fix a passive voice mistake. Here are ten rules that make up the experience of using passive voice fixer free:

Identify passive voice

• Identify a passive sentence by looking for forms of “to be” in a sentence followed by a past participle. The forms of “to be” are:  was, is, am, are, have been, has, will be, being and will have been. Ex: Jogging is something I do.”
• Look for an action word followed by the word “by” to identify a passive sentence. Ex: “The chocolate was eaten by Mary.”
• Missing subject. When the person/thing performing the action is missing it indicates passive voice is being used. Ex: “A mistake was made.”

Evaluate

• Ask yourself is the subject known? Ex: “My house was robbed” (passive) or “The thief robbed my house.” (active)
• Is it important that the reader know who/what the subject is? Ex: “The letter was delivered at 2 p.m.” Does the reader need to know who delivered the letter?
• Do you want the subject to remain anonymous? Ex: “A mistake was made.” (passive) Or do you want to assign blame. “The president made a mistake.”(active)
• Do you want to emphasize the object? Ex: “The bridge was built in 1979.” (passive) or “Construction workers built the bridge in 1979.”(active). Which is more important for your purpose, the bridge or the construction workers?

Change from passive to active

• Order the sentence so that it is in the subject/verb/object format. “John[subject] kicked[verb] the door[object] in.”
• Add a subject. Ex: “The ball was thrown” can be made active by adding a subject. “Cindy threw the ball.”
•  For passive sentences identified by an action word followed by the word “by” move the subject to the front of the sentence and remove the auxiliary verb plus the word “by”. Ex: “The ball was thrown by John” becomes “John threw the ball.”

This process can be a little complicated and confusing to many of us. Not everybody knows how to change passive verbs to active or even when you want to change them. A passive to active voice converter tool and passive to active sentence converter software not only identifies when passive voice is being used. It will also make suggestions on how to fix passive voice misuse and how to convert active into passive voice online.

Benefits of Our Active vs. Passive Voice Checker

Different types of text require using active and passive voice in different ways. It can be extremely difficult, especially in academic writing. You want to present your paper in a formal and objective manner while at the same time write concisely in a way that is not too difficult to understand. This may require switching from passive to active voice and pack again. A passive voice finder or active voice to passive voice converter online is extremely helpful in such situations. It identifies sentences written in passive voice and also suggests adjustments you can make to improve your text.

There are a number of benefits to be gained from using our passive voice editor aside from it showing you how to fix a passive voice mistake. It also functions as a grammar, spelling, punctuation and dictionary checker and checks word usage as well. In addition it can be used for any type of text including academic papers and essays, articles, blog posts, business emails and more. Students, bloggers, writers and businesspeople are just a few of those that will find our passive voice analyzer and passive to active generator useful. It is fast and easy to use and with all the additional features it makes an ideal proofreading and editing tool for anybody. 

Point-Of-View (POV)

Point of view is a very crucial part of storytelling, especially in writing to keep the targeted audience engaged more effectively. Any incorrect selection of the combination of POV and active/passive voice in your writing may lead to dull or irritating feelings in the audience. To find that passive voice misuse how to fix it either through manual checking or our free passive voice checker and corrector tool, you can make your writing super effective and productive.

There are four main types of point-of-views such as:

• Third-person POV – There are two sub-types of this point of view.
  • Third-person limited POV – In this point of view, the writer or storyteller uses third-person pronouns or nouns such as they, he, she, and it. A writer can hop into the head of one single character that he/she knows the best. This is a limited formal type of POV in which the extensive use of active voice along with limited use of passive voice is recommended.
  • Third-person omniscient POV – A point-of-view in which the writer knows about the feelings of every character it describes in the form of third-person pronouns and nouns such as He, She, It, and They. A writer can hop into the heads of multiple characters from this point-of-view. Active voice is the most desirable format in it.
• Second-person POV – The narrator uses the second-person pronoun as the core character through his experience to tell the way out or how-to-experience. It is extensively used in modern web content. Active voice makes learning more useful.
• First-person POV – In this type of point of view, the storyteller tells about his own feelings and experience expressed in the first-person pronouns such as I, We, Me, and Us. Active voice makes it a more assertive POV.

For consistently clear and concise writing try our passive voice misuse corrector and see how your papers and other texts improve.