Passive Voice Checker — Free Passive Voice Detector & Fixer

The passive voice — «the report was written by the team» instead of «the team wrote the report» — is grammatically correct, but English strongly prefers an active subject. Heavy passive writing reads indirect, bureaucratic, and, for non-native writers, distinctly «translated», because many languages lean on the passive far more than English does. This tool finds every passive construction so you can decide, sentence by sentence, whether the active version would be clearer.

Passive voice is not a mistake — it is a tool. Use it deliberately when the doer is unknown, irrelevant, or obvious («the building was constructed in 1890»), when you want to keep the focus on the receiver («the patient was treated immediately»), or in scientific writing where convention favours it. The goal is not zero passive — it is chosen passive. If a passive sentence has no good reason, make it active.

The fix is mechanical: find the real doer (often hiding in a «by …» phrase) and make it the subject. «The decision was made by the committee» → «The committee made the decision.» If no doer is named, you may need to supply one: «Mistakes were made» → «We made mistakes.» Active sentences are usually shorter, clearer, and more confident — three things that make English read like a native wrote it. Because the passive also pads sentences with extra words, it pairs well with a wordiness checker for a second tightening pass.

A passive voice checker (or detector) finds and flags every passive construction; a passive voice fixer rewrites it into the active voice for you. This tool is a checker — it highlights each passive sentence so you decide which ones to change, because a well-chosen passive is sometimes the better sentence. Doing the rewrite yourself is quick once you can see the pattern:

• «The results were analyzed by the team» → «The team analyzed the results»
• «A final decision will be made next week» → «The board will decide next week»
• «Several errors were found in the report» → «The reviewer found several errors in the report»

Each active version is shorter and names the doer. When you want the whole sentence rewritten rather than just flagged, Diglot's paraphrasing tool does the fixer job while keeping your meaning.

Before you can fix a sentence you have to classify it, and the test is two questions long. First, find the verb. Second, ask whether the subject is doing that verb or receiving it. «The reviewer rejected the paper» — the subject does the rejecting, so it is active. «The paper was rejected» — the subject receives it, so it is passive.

The structural giveaway is a form of be (is, are, was, were, been, being, am) followed by a past participle. Two traps worth knowing: «The paper was long» is not passive — «long» is an adjective, not a participle. And «The committee was meeting» is active continuous, not passive, because «meeting» is a present participle. This active and passive voice checker keys on the be-plus-past-participle pattern, which is what separates the two in practice.

Microsoft Word can flag passive voice, but it is off by default: open File → Options → Proofing → Settings and tick «Passive Voice» under Grammar. Google Docs has no dedicated passive setting at all — its grammar suggestions surface some passives incidentally and miss the rest.

Both share a limitation worth knowing: they check as you type, one sentence at a time, so you never see how much of the whole draft is passive. That share is the number that matters — a single passive sentence is fine, a draft that is one-third passive reads bureaucratic. Pasting the full text here gives you the count and the percentage at once, along with every flagged sentence in one list, which is the view a per-sentence checker cannot give you.