Passive Voice Finder
Paste text to highlight sentences that are likely written in the passive voice.
- The report was written by the committee last spring.
- Mistakes were made during the review.
Highlighted words are the “to be” form and the past participle that triggered the flag. This is a heuristic — check each sentence yourself before rewriting.
Passive voice is when the subject receives the action instead of doing it — “the report was written by the team” rather than “the team wrote the report”. This finder flags sentences where a form of “to be” is followed by a past participle. It is a heuristic, so it catches likely cases, not every one.
What passive voice is
In an active sentence the subject performs the action: “Sam threw the ball.” In a passive sentence the subject receives it, and the doer is demoted to a “by …” phrase or dropped entirely: “The ball was thrown by Sam,” or just “The ball was thrown.” The passive is built from a form of the verb to be (am, is, are, was, were, be, been, being) plus a past participle (thrown, written, made, used). It is grammatically correct — it is a style choice, not an error.
How this finder works
There is no formula, just pattern matching. The text is split into sentences at every full stop, question mark, and exclamation mark. Each sentence is scanned for a “to be” form (or get/got, which marks the get-passive like “got broken”) immediately or nearly followed by a past participle — a word ending in -ed or a common irregular participle such as written, made, taken, seen, or built. Sentences that match are highlighted. Because participles and “to be” also appear in perfectly active sentences, treat every flag as a prompt to read, not a verdict.
- 1 Split the text into sentences. The scanner breaks your text at each “.”, “!”, and “?” so every sentence is checked on its own.
- 2 Look for a “to be” verb. Words like is, are, was, were, be, been, and being (plus get/got) are the first half of the passive pattern.
- 3 Check the next word or two. A past participle right after it — “was written”, “were made”, “is used” — completes the pattern. Short adverbs in between (“was quickly taken”) still count.
- 4 Flag the sentence. In “The report was written by the committee.” the pair was + written triggers a flag; the highlight marks both words.
- 5 Rewrite by naming the doer. Move the actor to the front: “The committee wrote the report.” The sentence becomes active, shorter, and clearer.
Passive rewritten as active
The doer moves to the front and the “to be” + participle disappears.
| Passive | Active |
|---|---|
| The ball was thrown by Sam. | Sam threw the ball. |
| Mistakes were made during the review. | The reviewers made mistakes. |
| The results are shown in Table 2. | Table 2 shows the results. |
| The essay was written overnight. | She wrote the essay overnight. |
| The decision has been taken. | The board has taken the decision. |
When passive voice is the right choice
Passive voice is not a mistake to purge on sight. Use it when the doer is unknown, obvious, or irrelevant (“the samples were stored at 4 °C”), when you want to keep the focus on the receiver of the action, or to maintain flow by keeping a familiar subject at the start of consecutive sentences. Scientific and formal writing lean on it deliberately. The goal is not zero passives — it is choosing voice on purpose. Overuse, though, makes prose vague and wordy, so if the finder flags most of your sentences, that is worth a second look.