Whether you write on a part- or full-time basis, you can benefit from becoming more familiar with an often-overlooked aspect of writing that is treated in today’s column: active and passive voice ...

In most writing, active voice is preferred. In active voice, the subject performs the action. Ex: The cow jumped over the moon. In passive voice, the subject is passive; it performs no action. The ...

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 politics ...

The passive voice focuses more on an action that took place and places less importance on the person who performed the action. Writers who use passive voice may cause headaches and frustration among ...

Upon reading "Teaching Writing to Undergrads," I was a bit dismayed by John T. Ikeda Franklin's statement on use of the passive versus active voice when writing science reports (C&EN, Oct. 30, 2006, ...

"We applied an external magnetic field of 4 T while increasing the pressure to 300 kPa." or "An external magnetic field of 4 T was applied as the pressure was increased to 300 kPa." Which is the ...

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 ...

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 ...