Passive Voice Checker
Paste your text and this free online passive voice checker highlights every passive construction and weasel word, scores what percent of your sentences are passive, and shows the active rewrite.
Your text
Score
Aim for under 10–15% passive sentences in most writing.
0 words · Nothing to measure yet
Highlighted text
Nothing pasted yet. Drop some text above, or hit Sample text.
This runs on pattern matching in your browser, not grammar AI. It will miss the odd passive and occasionally flag an adjective (“the shop is closed”). Treat the numbers as a nudge, not a grade. Nothing you paste leaves your device.
How this passive voice checker works
What it looks for
Passive voice has a shape: a form of to be(am, is, are, was, were, be, been, being) followed by a past participle. “The report was written.” The detector walks your text word by word, finds those pairs, allows adverbs in between (“was carefully written”), and also catches get-passives like “got promoted”.
It knows regular -ed participles plus about 130 irregular ones (written, taken, given, built, done, seen, sold, thrown), and skips the usual false alarms where -edis really an adjective: “is interested in”, “is excited”, “is based in Berlin”. Progressive forms stay separate too: “is being built” is passive, “is running” is not.
Why weasel words are flagged too
Passive voice hides who did something. Weasel words hide who claimed something. “Studies show”, “experts say”, “up to 40%”, “arguably”, “reportedly” — each one borrows authority without naming a source. The checker highlights those in violet so you can name the study, give the real number, or delete the hedge.
The two habits travel together. “It is believed that costs will rise” is passive and unsourced in the same breath, and the fix is one move: say who believes it. That is why this works as a passive voice misuse checker rather than a plain grammar checker — it points at the sentences where nobody is willing to own the claim.
Active vs passive voice, line by line
An active sentence runs subject → verb → object. A passive one flips it: the object takes the subject slot, the real doer gets demoted to a “by ...” phrase or vanishes. Here is the same information both ways.
| Passive | Active | What changed |
|---|---|---|
| The results were published by the team. | The team published the results. | The doer moves to the front and the sentence sheds two words. |
| A decision has been reached. | The committee voted to close the site. | No actor at all in the passive version, so the rewrite forces one. |
| You are being charged a monthly fee. | We charge you £9 a month. | Active names the company taking the money, and the number. |
| Errors were found in the returns. | Our auditor found errors in the returns. | Readers learn who did the checking. |
| The form must be signed before Friday. | Sign the form before Friday. | Instructions read faster as a plain command. |
If you are not sure which one you have written, try the zombie test: add “by zombies” after the verb. “The budget was approved by zombies” works, so it is passive. “The board approved the budget by zombies” does not, so it is active.
Turning passive into active: 5 rewrites
The move is always the same. Find the doer (often stuck in a “by ...” phrase at the end, or missing entirely), put them at the front, and give them the verb.
- The proposal was approved by the board.The board approved the proposal.
- Mistakes were made.We shipped the wrong file.
- Your account has been suspended.We suspended your account.
- It was decided that the office would close.Management decided to close the office.
- The bug was fixed in version 2.1.We fixed the bug in version 2.1.
Notice what happens in row two. “Mistakes were made” has no actor at all, so the rewrite forces you to say who. That is usually the point.
When passive voice is the right call
Passive is a tool, not a fault. Keep it when:
- Nobody knows who did it. “The window was smashed overnight.”
- The actor does not matter. “The samples were stored at 4°C.” Lab methods run on passive for a reason.
- The receiver is the story. “Three hundred staff were laid off.”
- You want the flow. Passive lets you start a sentence with what the last one ended on.
- Naming the actor would be cruel or legally loaded, and you have thought about it rather than defaulted to it.
A 0% passive score is not a goal. Most published non-fiction sits somewhere under 15%.
Five sentences that fool passive voice checkers
Every automated checker, this one included, matches patterns rather than reading meaning. These are the cases worth eyeballing yourself before you rewrite anything.
- Past tense is not passive.“The committee rejected the plan” is past tense and fully active. Passive needs a form of to be plus a participle, not just an old-sounding verb.
- Participles that act as adjectives.“The shop is closed” describes a state, not an action someone performed. This checker skips a list of those, but it cannot skip every one, so an occasional false flag gets through.
- Progressive forms.“She is running the meeting” is active. “The meeting is being run” is passive. The difference is the participle after being, and the checker splits them correctly.
- Causative have.“We had the roof replaced” hides the actor just as well as a passive does, but it uses had rather than was, so no pattern-matching tool flags it. Worth hunting for by hand.
- Missing subjects.“Sent from my phone” and headline style drop the helper verb altogether. Nothing to match, nothing flagged.
Read the highlights as questions rather than verdicts. If a flagged sentence already says who did what, leave it alone.
Checking passive voice in Word, Google Docs and WordPress
Microsoft Word
Word can flag passive voice, but the setting ships switched off. On Windows: File → Options → Proofing, tick Check grammar with spelling and Show readability statistics, then open Settings next to the writing style box. Scroll past the first Grammar group — passive voice lives further down under Clarity and conciseness. Tick both Passive Voice and Passive Voice with Unknown Actor, then hit OK.
Word 2016 uses the same path once it has the Editor update, and older builds briefly dropped passive voice from readability statistics before Microsoft put it back. Passive sentences then pick up a thin blue underline, and the passive percentage appears in the Readability Statistics box — which only pops up after a full spelling and grammar pass finishes, not while you type. On Mac the same controls sit under Word → Preferences → Spelling & Grammar.
If your copy of Word does not show the option, run File → Account → Update Options → Update Now, or just paste the text into the box above.
Google Docs
Google Docs has no passive voice setting. Its built-in proofing covers spelling, grammar and a few style nudges, and stops there. The usual routes are a third-party add-on from the Workspace Marketplace, a browser extension, or copying the draft into an online passive voice checker like this one and pasting the fixes back. Nothing you paste here is uploaded, which matters if the doc is a client draft.
WordPress and Yoast
Yoast SEO runs a passive voice assessment inside its readability analysis. The bullet turns green when fewer than 10% of your sentences are passive and red once you pass roughly 15%, and the eye icon next to the check highlights the offending sentences in the editor. Those thresholds were set for conversational web copy, not for a methods section, so treat a red bullet as a prompt to reread rather than a rule. The percentage in the score panel above uses the same sentence-level counting, so you can fix a draft here before it ever reaches the WordPress editor.
Passive voice in essays and academic papers
The idea that academic writing must be passive is out of date. APA style permits both voices and recommends the active one for most sentences, including first person — I if you worked alone, wefor a group. APA explicitly tells you not to call yourself “the researcher”.
Passive still earns its keep in a methods section, where the procedure matters more than who held the pipette, and anywhere the result is the subject of the sentence. So a thesis will sit higher than 10% and that is fine. Use the highlights to find the paragraphs where every sentence is passive, since those are the ones markers describe as heavy going, and leave the deliberate ones alone.
How it compares with the paid checkers
| Tool | Passive voice handling | Catch |
|---|---|---|
| This checker | Highlights passive phrases and weasel words, counts passive sentences as a percentage. | Pattern matching only. No grammar or spelling correction. |
| Grammarly | Flags passive voice as a clarity suggestion and offers a rewrite. | Account required, and the strongest rewriting sits behind the paid plan. |
| ProWritingAid | Has a dedicated passive-voice count inside its style and writing reports. | Built for manuscripts; the report depth is a lot for a single email. |
| Hemingway Editor | Colours passive sentences green alongside adverbs and hard-to-read lines. | Does not check grammar, spelling or punctuation at all. |
| Sapling | Flags passive constructions as part of a business-writing assistant. | Aimed at support and sales teams, with a seat-based price. |
| LanguageTool | Offers passive voice as a style rule you switch on per profile. | The rule is off by default in some profiles, so people miss it. |
| Microsoft Word Editor | Underlines passive voice once you enable it, and reports a passive percentage. | Off by default, and the setting is buried two dialogs down. |
Feature lists change, so check the vendors before you buy. The honest summary: a paid editor is worth it if you want grammar, spelling and rewriting in one place. For the single question of where the passive sentences are, a free online passive voice checker answers it in a paste.
Passive voice checker FAQs
What is the best passive voice checker?
It depends what you want alongside it. Grammarly, ProWritingAid, Sapling and LanguageTool all flag passive voice inside a larger paid grammar app, and Hemingway Editor colours passive sentences green without touching grammar. This one does a single job, free, with no signup, and your text never leaves the browser tab. If you need line-by-line grammar correction too, use a full editor; if you only want to see where the passives are, this is faster.
Is this passive voice checker free?
Yes. No account, no word cap, no upload, no trial that expires. Everything runs as JavaScript on your own machine, which is also why it handles an essay, an email or a whole chapter without slowing down.
How do I turn on the passive voice checker in Word?
In Word for Windows: File, then Options, then Proofing. Tick "Check grammar with spelling" and "Show readability statistics", open Settings next to the writing style box, scroll down to the Clarity and conciseness group, and tick both Passive Voice and Passive Voice with Unknown Actor. Word 2016 uses the same path once it has the Editor update. On Mac the controls sit under Word, Preferences, Spelling and Grammar.
Why does Word not show my passive voice percentage?
The passive percentage lives in the Readability Statistics box, and that box only appears after a full spelling and grammar pass finishes on the document. Turn on "Show readability statistics" first, then run the check from start to end. If the document was already checked, choose "Recheck Document" in Word Options so the pass runs again.
Is there a passive voice checker for Google Docs?
Not built in. Google Docs proofing covers spelling, grammar and a handful of style nudges, with no passive voice setting. People either install a third-party add-on from the Workspace Marketplace, use a browser extension, or paste the draft into an online checker like this one and copy the rewrites back.
How do I check passive voice in WordPress?
Yoast SEO includes a passive voice assessment in its readability analysis. The bullet is green below 10% passive sentences and red above roughly 15%, and the eye icon beside the check highlights the passive sentences in the editor. Those numbers were tuned for conversational web copy, so a red bullet on a technical or academic post is worth a reread rather than an automatic rewrite.
What is the difference between active and passive voice?
Active: the subject does the verb. "The dog ate my homework." Passive: the subject receives it. "My homework was eaten by the dog." Same facts, but active is shorter, clearer about who is responsible, and easier to read aloud.
How do I know if a sentence is passive?
Look for a form of "to be" (am, is, are, was, were, be, been, being) followed by a past participle, or a "got" version like "got promoted". The quick check is the zombie test: if you can add "by zombies" after the verb and the sentence still makes sense, it is passive.
How much passive voice is too much?
Under 10% of sentences is tight, around 15% is normal for most writing, and past 20% readers feel the drag without knowing why. Academic, scientific and legal writing run higher on purpose. The percentage above counts sentences containing at least one passive construction, not individual verbs.
Is passive voice a grammar mistake?
No. It is a legitimate construction, and every style guide that dislikes it still allows it. It becomes a problem when it is the default rather than a decision, because it lets a sentence describe an action without naming who took it. That is why the tool calls it misuse rather than error.
Does it fix the passive voice for me?
It shows the pattern and the rewrite rule behind each flag, but it will not rewrite the sentence, because the checker cannot know who the missing actor is. You can. That gap is the whole reason passive voice hides things.
Can I use it as a passive voice checker for an essay or dissertation?
Yes, and it is worth knowing what to expect. APA style permits both voices, prefers active for most sentences, and allows first person for your own actions, while passive stays normal in a methods section. Expect an academic draft to score higher than a blog post, and use the highlights to find paragraphs where every sentence is passive rather than chasing a low number.