Passive: “The treaty was signed by two generals.” Active: “Two generals signed the treaty.” In Modern English, New York University’s Marcella Frank provides a more academic treatment: “The active ...

Does the passive voice lend itself to biased, manipulative writing? A reader named Richard wanted to know after witnessing a discussion about a news article. “Someone criticized an article on ...

Both sentence pairs make sense. Both describe the same facts. However, in each pair one sentence uses the active voice and one uses the passive voice. Which sentence would you use? That would ...

Home Law the explainer Grammar quiz: Do you know the passive voice? Many people claim they revile the passive. But most have trouble identifying it correctly.

Of all the technical advice I offer writers, none is more controversial than encouragement to use the passive voice. Most writers prefer the active, and so do I. But that preference has been ...

Passive speech is awkward and sometimes hard to understand. Let Word find your passive voice content and help you correct it.

And he celebrates the fact that The Aeneid and Moby-Dick begin with the active voice. But Melville begins Billy Budd with a passive, and -- pace Virgil -- condemning the passive voice is a 20th ...

To spot the difference, you have to know what passive voice is. Let’s start with a quiz. Is this sentence in the passive or active voice? “Bob had been planning on doing some serious thinking ...

Learn how to use the active and passive voice with BBC Bitesize KS3 English.