Is passive voice always grammatically incorrect?

No. Passive voice is grammatically correct and appropriate when the actor is unknown ('The painting was stolen') or when emphasizing the outcome over the doer ('Penicillin was discovered in 1928'). However, keeping passive sentences under 10% improves overall prose dynamism.

Can this distinguish between past tense and passive voice?

Yes. Simple past tense ('She finished the project') is active. Passive voice requires an auxiliary verb ('The project *was finished*'). The tool checks specifically for this auxiliary pairing.

Productivity

Passive Voice Sentence Detector

The problem: Overusing passive voice makes corporate proposals, student essays, and journalism weak, evasive, and harder to read.

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100% In-Browser Execution. Zero server uploads. Your data never leaves this tab — disconnect your internet and the tool keeps working.

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100% In-Browser Execution. Zero server uploads. Your data never leaves this tab — disconnect your internet and the tool keeps working.

4 Passive Voice Constructions Found

133% of sentences

Editor

Flagged Passive Constructions (4)

"was designed"passive verb

“The software architecture was designed by the engineering leads last quarter.”

"were conducted"passive verb

“Several performance benchmarks were conducted, and new caching layers have been introduced.”

"been introduced"passive verb

“Several performance benchmarks were conducted, and new caching layers have been introduced.”

"was approved"passive verb

“The final release was approved by executive stakeholders yesterday.”

Passive Voice Sentence Detector: the complete guide

A Passive Voice Sentence Highlighter scans prose to detect passive voice verb constructions ('was written', 'were completed', 'have been tested') and flags them for revision into direct, engaging active voice. While passive voice is occasionally acceptable in academic methodology sections, overusing it makes corporate writing, journalism, and student essays weak, bureaucratic, and detached. This tool highlights passive verb pairs and provides instant active voice awareness.

Passive Voice vs. Active Voice: Clarity and Responsibility

In an active sentence, the subject performs the action ('The team shipped the update'). In a passive sentence, the target of the action becomes the subject, obscuring who performed it ('The update was shipped by the team'). Active sentences are shorter, more dynamic, and clearly assign responsibility.

The 'Zombies' Test for Passive Voice

A classic grammatical test for passive voice is checking if you can grammatically insert 'by zombies' after the verb phrase. If 'The code was deployed (by zombies)' makes grammatical sense, the sentence is in passive voice. This tool automates detection using auxiliary 'to be' verbs paired with irregular and regular past participles.

Step by step: how to use Passive Voice

1
Paste your draft, essay, or corporate email into the editor.
2
The tool scans all sentences for auxiliary verbs combined with past participles.
3
Review the flagged passive constructions list on the right pane.
4
Observe the passive percentage metric showing the proportion of passive sentences.
5
Rewrite flagged sentences to place the actor before the verb for direct clarity.

Security & privacy

Text processing operates entirely in local memory using regular expressions. Your writing remains private and is never uploaded to any cloud server.