Of all the technical advice I offer writers, none is more controversial than encouragement to use the passive voice. Most writers prefer the active, and so do I. But that preference has been distorted ...

PITY the passive voice. No feature of the grammar of English has such a bad reputation. Style guides, including that of The Economist, as well as usage books like the celebrated American “Elements of ...

You've probably heard about active and passive voice, and you may have been told never to use the passive voice, but we’re here to tell you that both can work in different ways. Active voice is ...

Clear writing has become a competitive asset in Indian classrooms, yet many students still struggle to distinguish between active and passive voice. This guide explains how each form works, when to ...

Does the passive voice lend itself to biased, manipulative writing? A reader named Richard wanted to know after witnessing a discussion about a news article. “Someone criticized an article on politics ...

Both sentence pairs make sense. Both describe the same facts. However, in each pair one sentence uses the active voice and one uses the passive voice. Which sentence would you use? That would depend ...

1. The voice of the verb is distinct from its tense. Don't confuse the passive voice with the past tense. (Sentence 2 happens to be in the past tense, but 3 is not; both 2 and 3 are in the passive ...

Grammatically, the passive voice is made up of a form of “to be” and a past participle. Some examples of the passive voice include: “is believed,” “was seen,” “was written,” “will be considered,” and ...

The passive voice is an important grammatical structure that appears in every form of written and spoken English. Knowledge of this construction is vital for reading and writing English in everyday ...