Free Passive Voice Finder
Find weak passive sentences. Write sharper, more direct copy.
Passive voice is one of those things you don’t notice until someone points it out. Then you can’t stop seeing it.
It creeps into business writing more than anywhere else. Reports, emails, web copy, policy documents. The longer something is meant to sound serious, the more passive voice tends to appear. The result is writing that feels formal but vague. You can read a whole paragraph and not know who actually did anything.
This tool finds it for you. Paste in some writing and it highlights every passive construction. Click any highlight and you’ll see the rewriting pattern that fixes it.
It doesn’t do the rewriting for you. That’s deliberate. Active rewrites need context the tool can’t see, and an automated rewrite is just as likely to break your meaning as fix it. What the tool gives you is a clear map of where to look and a template for what to do next. The fix is short. Once you’ve done it a few times, you start spotting passive voice as you write, which is the real point.
Try it on something you’ve written recently. Most people are surprised how much passive voice shows up.
Rob, Wrise
What each colour means
The tool highlights three kinds of passive construction. Each one needs a slightly different fix.
Clear passive voice
A form of “to be” followed by a past participle. Definitely passive. “The report was written.” “Customers are being notified.” Rewrite in active voice where possible.
Possibly passive
Looks like passive voice but might be a descriptive state. “The door was closed” could be either. Have a look and decide whether to rewrite.
Weak attribution
Phrases like “it is believed”, “it has been said”, “mistakes were made”. They hide who’s responsible. State who actually believes, said, or did the thing.
How to spot passive voice
Passive voice has a recognisable shape. Once you know the pattern, you can’t unsee it.
Every passive sentence has two ingredients. First, a form of the verb “to be”: is, are, was, were, be, been, being. Second, a past participle, which is usually a verb ending in “-ed” (written, kicked, decided) or an irregular form (written, eaten, taken, broken, given). Put them together and you have passive voice.
The simple test for passive voice is the “by zombies” trick. If you can add “by zombies” after the verb and the sentence still makes grammatical sense, it’s passive.
The report was written [by zombies] last week.
Sarah wrote the report last week.
The other clue is the word “by”. Passive sentences often (not always) include a “by [someone]” phrase that tells you who actually did the thing. If the “by” phrase is there, the fix is straightforward. Move the doer to the front and rebuild the sentence around them.
The trickier case is when the doer is missing. “Mistakes were made.” Made by whom? You don’t know. Whoever wrote that sentence didn’t want you to know. This is the politician’s passive, and it’s usually the most important kind to fix because it’s the most evasive.
Why passive voice weakens your writing
Grammar guides will tell you passive voice is “not wrong”. That’s technically true and entirely beside the point. Passive voice is rarely wrong but frequently worse. Here’s what it actually costs you.
It’s longer. “The report was written by Sarah” is six words. “Sarah wrote the report” is four. Multiply that across a page and your reader is wading through 30% more sentence for no extra meaning.
It hides the doer. Active voice puts the subject up front: who did what. Passive voice buries them or removes them entirely. “The decision was reached” doesn’t tell you who made it. In business writing, that ambiguity reads as evasion, even when it isn’t.
It’s harder to follow. Active sentences move in the order our brains expect: subject, verb, object. Sarah wrote the report. Passive flips it: object, verb, subject. The report was written by Sarah. The brain has to do extra work to unpick it, and on a long page that work adds up.
It signals corporate distance. Heavy passive voice is the hallmark of writing that doesn’t want to commit. Annual reports, terms and conditions, press releases from organisations under pressure. Readers pick up on it instantly. Active voice sounds confident; passive voice sounds defensive.
None of this means you can never use passive voice. There are real cases where it’s the right tool, which we’ll cover next. But as a default, active voice will almost always serve you better.
For broader writing improvements alongside passive voice, try our Content Clarity Checker, which catches sentence length, weakening adverbs, and complex words too.
When passive voice is the right choice
Passive voice isn’t a grammatical sin. It exists because sometimes it’s genuinely the better choice. Here are the four times you should keep it.
The doer is unknown
“The window was broken overnight.” If you don’t know who did it, passive voice is honest. Active voice would force you to invent a subject.
The doer doesn’t matter
“The building was completed in 1923.” Nobody cares which construction firm did it. Passive voice puts the focus where it belongs: on the building.
The object is what matters
“The new vaccine has been approved by the regulator.” The vaccine is the story, not the regulator. Putting it first keeps the emphasis right.
You’re writing scientific method
“The samples were heated to 80°C.” In a methods section, who heated them is irrelevant. Passive voice keeps the writing impersonal and focused on procedure.
The rule of thumb: if you can’t justify the passive, rewrite it. Most of the time, you can’t.
How to rewrite passive sentences in three steps
The fix is mechanical. Once you’ve done it a few times, it becomes second nature.
Step 1: Find the doer. Who or what is actually performing the action? Sometimes they’re in the sentence (after the word “by”). Sometimes they’re missing entirely, and you need to add them.
Step 2: Move the doer to the front. The subject of an active sentence is the person or thing doing the verb. Put them first.
Step 3: Rebuild the verb. Drop the “to be” helper and change the participle to a simple verb. “Was written” becomes “wrote”. “Has been approved” becomes “approved”.
The new policy was approved by the board last Tuesday.
The board approved the new policy last Tuesday.
When the doer is missing, you have to make a decision. Either add the doer back in (“mistakes were made” → “we made mistakes”), or accept that the passive is fine because the doer genuinely doesn’t matter (“the building was completed” can stay as it is).
The harder cases are sentences with chains of passives or buried clauses. “It is believed by industry experts that significant changes will be required if the new regulations are implemented.” That sentence has three passives. The fix isn’t to rewrite each one in turn. It’s to throw the whole sentence out and write what you actually mean. “Industry experts say the new regulations will force significant changes.” Active, shorter, and clearer.
Passive voice and SEO
Passive voice doesn’t directly affect search rankings. There’s no Google ranking factor for active voice. But it affects the things that do.
Active writing is shorter, which means more information fits above the fold. It’s easier to scan, which keeps people on the page longer. It’s clearer, which improves conversion from reader to action. All of these are engagement signals that Google uses to decide which content deserves to rank.
The effect is bigger for AI search. Tools like Google’s AI Overviews and ChatGPT preferentially extract content that’s clear and direct. A sentence in active voice (“Anthropic launched Claude in 2023”) is easier for an AI to summarise and cite than a passive equivalent (“Claude was launched by Anthropic in 2023”). Across hundreds of pages, that adds up to a real visibility difference.
For service businesses in particular, active voice also affects how trustworthy the writing feels. Passive voice in service copy reads as hedging. Active voice reads as confidence. People hire businesses that sound confident.
If you want help applying this across your site, our SEO packages include content optimisation as part of the standard service, alongside the technical and ranking work that gets your pages found.
Frequently asked questions
What is passive voice?
Passive voice is a grammatical construction where the subject of the sentence receives the action rather than performing it. The pattern is a form of “to be” (is, are, was, were, be, been, being) followed by a past participle. “The report was written by Sarah” is passive. The report didn’t do anything; it had something done to it.
Active voice flips this. The subject performs the action. “Sarah wrote the report.” Sarah is the subject, and she’s the one doing the writing. Most writing is clearer in active voice because it follows the order our brains expect: who did what.
How do I find passive voice in my writing?
Paste your text into the tool above and every passive construction will be highlighted. If you want to spot it manually, look for two things together: a form of “to be” (is, are, was, were, be, been, being), and a verb ending in “-ed” or an irregular past participle (written, taken, given, broken, made, done).
The “by zombies” test is the easiest manual check. If you can add “by zombies” after the verb and the sentence still makes grammatical sense, it’s passive. “The report was written by zombies” works grammatically, so the sentence is passive.
What passive voice score should I aim for?
For most web content and business writing, aim for under 10% of sentences in passive voice. The Hemingway Editor uses 2% as its strict target, but in practice, 10% is a more realistic benchmark that allows for the legitimate uses of passive voice.
Different content types have different norms. Marketing copy and blog posts should sit at 5% or below. Reports and academic writing tend to run higher (15 to 20%) because they describe processes and findings rather than actions. Legal and scientific writing often run higher still. The tool’s score is a guide, not a rule.
Is passive voice grammatically wrong?
No. Passive voice is grammatically correct. It’s a stylistic choice, not an error. Style guides recommend active voice as a default because it’s usually clearer and shorter, but passive voice has legitimate uses and shouldn’t be eliminated entirely.
The advice to “avoid passive voice” is shorthand for “use active voice by default and only choose passive when you have a reason”. The four main reasons are: the doer is unknown, the doer doesn’t matter, the object is the focus, or you’re writing scientific procedure. Outside those cases, active voice is almost always the better call.
Why does the tool flag some sentences as “possibly passive”?
Some constructions look like passive voice but might actually be describing a state rather than an action. “The door was closed” could mean someone closed the door (passive action) or that the door was in a closed state (descriptive). Without understanding context, the tool can’t always tell.
These “possibly passive” flags are worth a look but don’t always need rewriting. If the sentence is describing a state, leave it. If it’s describing an action with a hidden doer, consider rewriting it.
Does the tool rewrite passive sentences for me?
No, and that’s deliberate. Rewriting passive into active voice requires context the tool can’t see. Who’s the actual subject? What tense should the new verb take? Should the doer even be included? Automated rewrites tend to get these wrong often enough to do more harm than good.
Instead, when you click a highlighted passage, the tool shows you the rewriting pattern for that type of passive. You do the rewrite yourself in seconds, with full control over the meaning. Once you’ve done it a handful of times, you start writing in active voice by default.
What counts as a “weak attribution”?
Weak attributions are agentless passive constructions that hide who’s responsible. Phrases like “it is believed”, “it has been said”, “mistakes were made”, “a decision was reached”. They sound formal but they’re evasive. Believed by whom? Said by whom? Who made the mistakes?
These are usually the most important passives to fix. Rewriting them forces you to name the actor, which makes the writing more honest and more useful. “Experts believe” is stronger than “it is believed”. “We made mistakes” is stronger than “mistakes were made”.
Does passive voice affect SEO?
Not directly. Google doesn’t have a passive voice ranking factor. But passive voice affects the things Google does measure: bounce rate, dwell time, scroll depth, and click-through rate. Clearer writing keeps people on the page longer and gets shared more, both of which feed back into rankings.
The bigger effect is on AI search. AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and similar tools preferentially extract and cite content that’s clear and direct. Active voice is shorter, easier to parse, and more likely to be quoted. Across a whole site, that adds up to a meaningful visibility difference. If you’d rather not do this yourself, our SEO packages include content optimisation as standard.
How is this different from Grammarly’s passive voice checker?
The core detection job is similar, but our tool has a narrower focus. It does one thing: find passive voice and show you how to rewrite it. No sign-up, no character limits, no upsells to a paid plan.
It also categorises passive voice into three types (clear passive, possibly passive, weak attribution) and gives you specific rewriting guidance for each one rather than a single generic suggestion. And it uses British English defaults throughout, which matters for UK writers more than most tools acknowledge.
Is the tool free to use?
Yes. The Passive Voice Finder is completely free. No sign-up, no account, no character limits, no restrictions on how often you can use it. Your text never leaves your browser; the tool runs entirely on your device.