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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Of all the technical advice I offer writers, none is more controversial than encouragement to use the passive voice. Most writers prefer the active, and so do I. But that preference has been distorted ...

Passive and active voice simply refer to the relationship of the subject to the verb. In a sentence using the active voice, the subject of the sentence (doer) performs the action described by the verb ...

How to find and rewrite instances of passive voice in your Microsoft Word documents Your email has been sent Passive speech is awkward and sometimes hard to understand. Let Word find your passive ...

The passive voice focuses more on an action that took place and places less importance on the person who performed the action. Writers who use passive voice may cause headaches and frustration among ...

William Germano finds it ironic that academics warn their students off the passive voice while peppering their own writing with that construction (“Passive Is Spoken Here,” The Chronicle Review, April ...