What the highlights mean
Amber marks a confident passive: a be or get verb plus a past participle, where the subject receives the action. Pale amber marks a probable passive, where the participle could also be read as an adjective (“the store was closed”). A dotted underline marks a be + participle that is really an adjective (“she was tired”); those are shown so you can see the engine’s reasoning, but they are not counted. Blue marks the agent — the doer named after “by” — which is what the rewrite moves to the front.
What a passive sentence is
In a passive sentence, the subject receives the action instead of doing it. “The report was written by the manager” is passive: the report did nothing; the manager did. “The manager wrote the report” says the same thing in the active voice, three words shorter, with the doer first. The Purdue OWL has the standard explanation; our what is passive voice guide goes deeper.
Passive voice is not a grammatical error. It is a choice, and sometimes the right one: when the doer is unknown (“My car was stolen”), obvious (“The suspect was arrested”), or less important than the thing acted on (“The bridge was built in 1932”). The checker’s job is to show you every place you made that choice, so you can decide whether you meant to.
How to use the results
- Read the amber sentences first. For each, ask who did the action. If you know and the reader should know, use the rewrite or write your own with the doer first.
- If the doer is unknown, obvious, or beside the point, leave the sentence alone. The verdict line under each note says when that is likely.
- Watch the percentage, not just the count. Under 10% is the usual target for web copy; reports, methods sections and legal drafting run higher, and that is normal. The benchmark bar compares your text with the groups in our Passive Voice Index.
- Use “Copy results” to paste the flagged sentences and rewrites into an editing note, or switch to the converter to get a cleaned-up copy of the whole text.
Where this checker differs from the others
Most free passive voice checkers are the front door of a subscription product: they highlight a few sentences and ask you to sign up for the rest. Ours is the whole product. It also does three things the others skip. It separates true passives from adjectival look-alikes instead of flagging every “was” + “-ed.” It catches get-passives, modal passives and infinitive passives (“got fired,” “must be signed,” “needs to be done”), which be-verb-only checkers miss. And it tells you when the passive is probably fine, rather than treating every instance as a mistake.
Questions
- How does this passive voice checker work?
It looks for a form of be or get followed by a past participle (“was written,” “has been reviewed,” “got fired”), including modal and infinitive forms (“must be signed,” “needs to be done”). Each hit is scored as passive, probably passive, or an adjective that only looks passive, and the engine looks for a “by …” agent so it can suggest an active rewrite.
- Is it free? Is there a word limit?
Free, no account, and no limit. The engine runs entirely in your browser, so a 100,000-word manuscript works as well as one sentence — it just takes a few seconds longer.
- Is my text uploaded anywhere?
No. The page loads a JavaScript engine and does the analysis on your device. Nothing you paste is sent to our server or anyone else’s.
- Why does it say "adjective, not passive" for sentences like "I am interested"?
Because that is what they are. “Interested,” “tired,” “excited” and similar words describe a state. They have the shape of a passive (be + past participle) but nothing is being done to the subject. Most checkers flag them anyway; we grey them out and leave them out of your score.
- How accurate is it?
On our published 151-sentence test set — passives, adjectival look-alikes and active sentences that fool simpler checkers — the engine scores 100% on passive-or-not and 98% on the exact confidence tier. Real text is messier than a test set, so treat each flag as a question, not a verdict.
- What percentage of passive voice is acceptable?
Yoast’s readability check sets the ceiling at 10% of sentences for web copy. Our Passive Voice Index shows that published prose varies widely: fiction classics run around 13%, modern State of the Union speeches around 10%, and the U.S. Constitution over 50%. The right number depends on what you are writing; the benchmark bar beside your score shows where you land.