Passive Voice Detector
Find passive voice sentences in your writing and get tips for converting them to active voice.
What the Passive Voice Detector does
This tool reads your text, splits it into sentences, and flags the ones written in the passive voice. A sentence is passive when the subject receives the action instead of performing it, usually formed with a "to be" verb (is, was, were, been, being) followed by a past participle, as in "The report was written by Sarah." The detector recognises both regular participles ending in -ed and a long list of irregular ones such as written, spoken, taken, and made.
It then reports the percentage of passive sentences, lists each passive sentence it found, and rates your writing as Excellent, Acceptable, or High based on how much passive voice you use. The aim is not to eliminate passive voice entirely but to make you aware of it so you can decide, sentence by sentence, whether the active form would be clearer.
How to use it
Paste an essay, email, report, or any block of text into the box and click "Detect Passive Voice". You will get an overall percentage, a count of total, passive, and active sentences, and a numbered list of the passive sentences so you can find and revise them quickly.
To convert a flagged sentence to active voice, identify who or what performs the action and make that the subject. "Mistakes were made" becomes "We made mistakes"; "The package was delivered" becomes "The courier delivered the package." As a general guideline, aiming for under about 10 percent passive sentences keeps most writing direct and readable.
When passive voice is fine
Passive voice is not a grammatical error, and it has legitimate uses. It is appropriate when the actor is unknown or irrelevant ("The window was broken overnight"), when you want to emphasise the thing acted upon rather than who acted, or in scientific and formal writing where convention favours it ("The samples were heated to 90 degrees").
Because the detector works by pattern matching on "to be" verbs and participles, it can occasionally misjudge a borderline sentence. Treat the results as a guide that draws your attention to candidates worth reviewing, then use your own judgement about whether each one reads better in the active voice.