One "rule" that many self-appointed experts on writing return to again and again is: "Don't use the passive!" Or, as some puckishly put it, "The passive voice should be avoided." The passive voice is ...

The great thing about being a grammar expert is you don’t have to know anything about grammar to be one. Just launch a blog, say whatever you think is true and bask in the certainty that no one will ...

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 ...

Do you want to improve your English? Are you looking for resources to help support your written and spoken grammar? This Grammar workshop is one of two stand-alone grammar workshops open to all ...

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 ...

How to find and rewrite instances of passive voice in your Microsoft Word documents Your email has been sent Passive speech is awkward and sometimes hard to understand. Let Word find your passive ...

50 years after its publication, Strunk & White's "Elements of Style" still influences our thinking about language, particularly our disapproval of the passive voice. But our linguist Geoff Nunberg ...

Teaching students to write in the active voice will significantly strengthen their essays because sentences written in the active voice often have much more impact than those written in the passive ...

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 ...