Passive Voice Detector
Highlights passive voice sentences in your text to help you write more directly.
Active vs Passive Voice — Why It Matters for Readability
Passive voice makes writing weak, wordy and harder to read — "The report was written by the team" is weaker than "The team wrote the report". Style guides including AP Style, Google's developer documentation guide and Yoast SEO all recommend keeping passive voice below 10% of sentences. However, passive voice is sometimes correct — in scientific writing, when the actor is unknown or irrelevant, or when you want to emphasise the object.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is passive voice and how to identify it? ▼
Passive voice: the subject of the sentence receives the action rather than performing it. Structure: [Subject] + [be verb] + [past participle] + (optional: "by" + actor). Examples: "The email was sent" (passive), "I sent the email" (active). Signal words: was, were, is, are, been, being + past participle (-ed, irregular verb).
How much passive voice is acceptable in writing? ▼
Style guides recommend: Yoast SEO: no more than 10% of sentences passive. Hemingway App: similar threshold. Academic/scientific writing: 25–30% passive is acceptable. Business writing: 5–10% passive. Legal writing: passive is often intentional and accepted. For blog and web content targeting SEO, keep it under 10%.
When is passive voice actually correct to use? ▼
Use passive voice when: (1) The actor is unknown — "The window was broken" (you don't know who), (2) The actor is unimportant — "The study was conducted in 2023", (3) You want to emphasise the object — "The CEO was fired" (the firing matters, not who fired), (4) Scientific writing convention — "The samples were analysed".
How does passive voice affect SEO? ▼
Passive voice hurts SEO indirectly: harder to read content increases bounce rate and reduces time on page, both signals Google uses for quality assessment. Yoast SEO's readability checker specifically flags passive voice as a negative signal. Active, direct writing is also more likely to be selected as a featured snippet.