Passive Voice Detector
Free passive voice detector that highlights passive sentences, scores the ratio, and suggests an active rewrite, all in your browser.
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What is Passive Voice Detector?
The Passive Voice Detector scans pasted text for passive constructions — a be-verb followed by a past participle — and reports what a copy editor would: which sentences are passive, how large the share is, and what to do about each one. Every match is highlighted inside its original sentence with a rewrite hint, and a passive-ratio percent summarizes the whole passage, so you can target the spots where active voice will do the most good. Everything runs locally in your browser.
Key Benefits
- Instant ratio score showing the passive share of your passage
- Highlights the exact fragment, not just the sentence
- Rewrite hints that distinguish by-phrase and agentless passives
- Handles irregular participles like written, built and thrown
- Private by design — analysis never leaves the page
Common Use Cases
- •Tightening emails and cover letters before sending
- •Checking essays against a passive-voice limit
- •Editing reports where accountability matters
- •Teaching or learning the difference between active and passive
- •Sweeping marketing copy for weak, agentless claims
How to Check for Passive Voice
- Paste your draft: Paste the paragraph, email or report section into the box. Everything is analyzed locally, so drafts never leave the page.
- Read the ratio: The headline percent is passive sentences divided by total sentences. Business writing usually reads better under about ten percent, while scientific method sections traditionally run higher.
- Review each flag: Every highlighted fragment is a be-verb followed by a past participle, with adverbs allowed in between. Sentences with a by-phrase show the agent to relocate; agentless ones ask you to name the actor.
- Rewrite and rescan: Flip the flagged sentence so the doer becomes the subject, then clear and paste the revision to watch the ratio drop.
Key Features
- Flags be-verb plus past-participle patterns, including irregular verbs
- Passive ratio score out of total sentences at a glance
- Highlighted fragment for every match, inside the original sentence
- Per-sentence rewrite hints for by-phrase and agentless passives
- Runs entirely in your browser — nothing is uploaded
Frequently Asked Questions
What counts as a passive construction?
A be-verb (is, was, were, been, being and friends) followed by a past participle, with adverbs and not allowed in between: the report was finished, mistakes were made, the bridge is being repaired. The detector also knows irregular participles such as written, thrown and built, not just words ending in -ed.
Is passive voice always wrong?
No. It is the right choice when the actor is unknown or irrelevant, as in the road was resurfaced last year, and scientific writing traditionally uses it in method sections. The ratio exists so the choice is deliberate: when most of your sentences are passive without a reason, readers lose track of who does what.
Why is was supposed to not flagged?
Phrases like was supposed to and was used to describe a state or habit rather than an action done to the subject, so the detector deliberately skips them. True passives such as the samples were used in the study still get flagged.
How is the ratio calculated?
Passive sentences divided by total sentences, shown as a whole percent. A sentence with two passive constructions still counts once, and sentence boundaries are detected by terminal punctuation, so bullet fragments without periods count as one sentence each.