For many writers, feedback that your copy is "too passive" can be frustrating. The passive voice is, after all, grammatically correct. But there's a reason that public relations and communications ...

This handout is also available for download in PDF format. We refer to a sentence as being in the "active voice" when the subject is performing the action of the sentence (the verb). A sentence is in ...

Microsoft Word 2010 can help punch up your document's prose by alerting you when you use passive voice in a sentence. If you write "the goal was achieved" instead of the more active "we achieved the ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Laura Brown writes about business communication. If you’ve ever had any writing training, either at school or on the job, you’ve ...

THE cult of the active voice is one of the most enduring in English grammar. From grade school onwards most everybody is taught that sentences in the active voice are the end-all and be-all of English ...

The great thing about being a grammar expert is you don’t have to know anything about grammar to be one. Just launch a blog, say whatever you think is true and bask in the certainty that no one will ...

Writing in the active voice makes the meaning clear while keeping sentences from becoming complicated and wordy. Sentences using passive voice are not necessarily wrong, just less effective than ...

Both sentence pairs make sense. Both describe the same facts. However, in each pair one sentence uses the active voice and one uses the passive voice. Which sentence would you use? That would depend ...