Auxiliary verb phrases are shown in italics with yellow highlights, while the transitive action verb is shown bold with green highlights.
ZombiesClick on the bio hazard symbol (☣) on the left to summon the zombies. The phrase "by zombies" will be inserted (by zombies!) next to the transitive verb in the sentence list above. If the new sentence reads clearly as the zombies doing the action, the sentence is written in passive voice. Click the bio hazard symbol again for the sentences to return to normal.
[1] Zombies Test
The passive voice detector automatically detects passive voice in a block of text (now with the aid of zombies!).
When a sentence is written in passive voice, the subject is being acted upon rather than doing the acting. Passive voice is often avoided by professional writers because it can make the sentence needlessly longer, more complicated and unclear as well as shifting the emphases away from the sentence subject. While there's nothing grammatically incorrect about passive voice, the general rule of thumb is to strive for less than 2% passive voice.
The most common passive voice construction is a variant of the auxiliary verb 'to be' followed by the past participle of a transitive verb. Our passive voice detector finds this form, as well as other less common constructions, including additional auxiliary verbs like 'get' (e.g. "Every friday he gets paid."). A common mistake is to assume every past form of the 'to be' verb is passive voice (e.g. "Grandma was calling."). In the second example, the subject (Grandma) is preforming the action. This is an example of past progressive tense and is not considered passive voice.
Still unsure what is considered passive voice? Try the Zombie test. If you can add the phrase "by zombies" after the verb and the sentence still makes sense, it's passive voice. The sentence "Every friday he gets paid by Zombies" makes grammatical sense where "Grandma was calling by zombies" does not.
To get started enter your text in the Passage to be Analyzed box. If you want to leave a passive construction in the text, you can dismiss the warning by clicking on it in the Passive Voice Tab.
Have your own website? Now you can use the Site Thin Content Checker to analyze the content of each page on your site with the Passive Voice Detector, as well as and other Writing Assistance Tools.