The passive voice is one of the most detested forms of writing in the realm of literature. Not that there’s anything wrong with it, but it doesn’t have the same appeal as the passive voice. That’s why it’s important to use active or passive sentences checker!
In fact, from an early age, most professional writers tend to ignore the use of the passive voice at all costs.
Nevertheless, there are some instances where the passive voice can be quite handy. Especially if you’re writing content in a formal tone or working on an academic paper. Thankfully, you can use a passive voice detector free to determine such instances.
Why the Use of the Passive Voice Can Make Your Text Unbearable
However, when it comes to dealing with content pertaining to entertainment, the passive voice is least favored over the active voice.
The primary reason for such a setup is because the passive voice tends to minimize the flow and readability of content.
This is why you will see most blogs, magazines, and online content falling on the passive voice while dealing with its audience. Indeed, it is important to know how to spot passive voice misuse.
As a matter of fact, here are some of the reasons why the use of the passive voice can make your text unbearable to read.
- The Passive Voice is Boring: The passive voice does not have an interesting ebb and flow to it. Hence, it tends to be pretty boring especially when it is used excessively. In turn, most writers tend to avoid it and most often use an app to detect passive voice in the text.
- The Passive Voice is Too Formal: Additionally, the passive voice has a formal sense to it. In fact, it is mostly used by political leaders to address their people in speeches.
- The Passive Voice is Mostly Used for Academic Purposes: Moreover, because of its formal state, the passive voice is also used in the academic writing spectrum. Hence, it is avoided because of its wide use in the academic spectrum!
Determining Passive Voice Verb Examples in Your Content
With that being said, here are some of the passive voice verb examples that you need to keep in mind of when writing content for an audience.
So, when trying to identify the passive voice, there are two things you have to know. The first one is that the passive voice is used whenever the subject performs an action verb on a particular object. Here are some examples you can have a look at when it comes to the passive voice.
- Passive Voice in Present tense
- The ball is passed by the boy.
- Passive Voice in Past Tense
- The ball was passed by the boy.
10 Amazing Tips You Can Use to Find Passive Voice in Your Content Today
Keeping this in mind, here are some 10 tips to finding elements of passive voice in the sentence:
- Look for the subject in the sentence: The first critical way to determine the passive voice in English is to know the subject or noun phrase of the sentence. As stated earlier, the passive voice is present when the subject performs the action on a given verb. For example, John kicked the ball. Here, we can see that John is the subject and that the kicking of the ball is done by him on the object.
- Look for the verb in the sentence: Secondly, knowing the action verb is vital in helping you differentiate between the subject and the object. Still using our first example, we can see that the object, in this case, is the ball because it is the one that is being kicked by the subject, John.
- Find the object of the sentence: We can tell from the first example that the object is the ball because it is the one subjected to the action by the object.
- Determine the auxiliary verb if any: When converting from passive voice to active voice, the auxiliary verb ‘to be’ is usually introduced into the sentence. In this case, we can see that there is no auxiliary verb, hence the sentence is in the passive voice.
- Know the type of tense in the sentence: Knowing the type of tense being used is also important in helping you maintain the correct tense when converting from passive voice to active voice.
- Make the verb the subject of the sentence: Additionally, when converting from the passive voice to the active voice, we usually make the passive voice verb examples the core element of the sentence. Therefore, in compound sentences where the verb is the focal point of the structure, we say that this particular sentence is in the active voice.
- Check on the flow and tone of your content: As aforementioned earlier, the passive voice usually has a very dull flow to it. So if you notice that you have a poor flow with your content, then chances are high that that particular content is mostly written in the passive voice.
- Determine the readability of the content: Flow and readability tie together. Having poor flow means your content will be unreadable, which might mean that you are using shades of the passive voice in your content.
- Proofread to determine all instances of passive voice: Additionally, you can also proofread content to determine all the instances of passive voice within it. This way, you can avoid it altogether and ensure that it maintains a flow with the active voice throughout.
- Use a passive voice checker: Last but not least, you can also use an automatic passive voice detector which instantly determines every occurrence of passive voice within your content.
When Should You Use an Automatic Passive Detector Free Online?
Ideally, using a passive and active voice detector is beneficial because of the following advantages.
- It can be used seamlessly as a Chrome extension: Indeed, you can use the passive voice detector for essays via chrome without making a download to instantly check all your online content.
- The service is free of charge: There are no additional charges that are made to you while using our passive voice misuse fixer. It is 100% free!
- Additional services to be used: This includes a plagiarism check to ensure your content is unique, a word count check to ensure that you do not surpass the intended word count, and a spelling check to ensure that your content does not have any grammatical errors.