Passive Voice Detector — Find and Fix Passive Sentences
Paste your text and see every passive-voice sentence flagged — so you can decide where an active subject would land harder and clearer.
Why passive voice matters
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.
When the passive is actually the right choice
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.
How to convert passive to 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.
Take it further with Diglot
This free tool runs in your browser. When you want to act on what it shows — fix the grammar, tighten the phrasing, or make your English read like a native wrote it — that is what Diglot is built for. The free tier is meaningful for daily writing, no card required.
Frequently asked questions
- How does the tool detect passive voice?
- It scans each sentence for a form of «be» (is, are, was, were, been, being) followed by a past participle — the structure of the English passive. It is a heuristic, so it can occasionally miss an unusual construction or flag a similar-looking active one, but it catches the large majority.
- Is passive voice grammatically wrong?
- No — it is correct English and sometimes the best choice. The issue is overuse. Native English writing uses the passive sparingly; heavy passive reads indirect and is a common signal of non-native or translated text. Aim for deliberate passive, not zero passive.
- How much passive voice is too much?
- There is no hard rule, but if a large share of your sentences are passive without a clear reason, the writing will read heavy. Convert the ones where the doer matters or where the active version is simply clearer, and keep the passive only where it genuinely serves the sentence.
- Is my text uploaded anywhere?
- No. The detection runs entirely in your browser — your text is never sent to a server or stored. You can safely paste confidential or unpublished writing.
