For many writers, feedback that your copy is "too passive" can be frustrating. The passive voice is, after all, grammatically correct. But there's a reason that public relations and communications ...

This handout is also available for download in PDF format. We refer to a sentence as being in the "active voice" when the subject is performing the action of the sentence (the verb). A sentence is in ...

“Never use a long word where a short one will do. If it is possible to cut a word out always cut it out. Never use the passive voice where you can use the active.” —George Orwell Note: The above is ...

If your resume is full of phrases like "was responsible for ...", then you're using the passive voice. A lot of people make this mistake. If you want a stronger resume, you need to replace the passive ...

You probably learned it in one of your earliest writing classes: Active voice means the grammatical subject is doing the acting, and passive voice means the subject is acted upon. It is the difference ...

So, you’ve gotten your graded essay back, and you weren’t exactly content with the results. Perhaps you’ve gone through the in-line comments that your GSI left you, or perhaps you’re wondering what ...

The passive voice focuses more on an action that took place and places less importance on the person who performed the action. Writers who use passive voice may cause headaches and frustration among ...

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 ...

The active and passive voice are different ways of structuring the same information in a sentence. In the active voice, the subject of the sentence comes first and performs the action (the verb). The ...