Aim to keep passive voice under about 10 percent for clear, scannable writing.
Each sentence below likely uses passive voice. Rewrite it so the subject does the action, then paste it back to recheck.
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Passive voice is a sentence where the subject receives the action instead of doing it. "The report was written by the team" is passive; "the team wrote the report" is active. The checker above splits your text into sentences, flags the passive ones, and gives you a passive percentage so you know how much of your writing needs tightening.
In active voice, the subject does the action: "Our team launched the feature." In passive voice, the action happens to the subject, usually with a form of "to be" plus a past participle: "The feature was launched by our team." The actor often drops off the end of the sentence entirely, leaving "the feature was launched" with no one responsible for it.
A few quick comparisons make the pattern clear. "Mistakes were made" hides who made them; "we made mistakes" owns it. "The decision was reached" is vague; "the board reached the decision" names the actor. "Results are seen by customers" is clumsy; "customers see results" is clean. The active version is almost always shorter and easier to follow.
Active voice is shorter, clearer, and more direct, which is exactly what readers and search engines reward. Active sentences put the actor first, so the reader knows who is doing what without untangling the grammar. That clarity lifts readability scores, keeps people on the page longer, and makes your writing easier to skim.
It also helps with how modern search surfaces your content. Featured snippets and AI assistants prefer concise, self-contained statements they can lift and quote. "Active voice improves readability" is the kind of crisp sentence an answer engine will reuse; "readability is improved by the use of active voice" is not. Writing in active voice gives your best lines a better shot at being cited.
The fix is almost always the same: find the actor and make it the subject. Ask "who did this?" In "the bug was found during testing," the actor is whoever found it. Rewrite it as "our QA team found the bug during testing." If the actor is genuinely unknown or unimportant, passive voice is fine, but in most marketing and web content there is a clear actor you can name.
Work through the flagged sentences one at a time. Move the actor to the front, drop the "to be" verb, and use a direct verb instead. Then recheck. A handful of rewrites usually drops a heavy passive score well under 10 percent. If you want a full content review tied to rankings and AI citations rather than just grammar, our content optimization service covers it end to end.
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