What’s The Best Free Passive Voice Checker For You?

Are you looking for a reliable passive voice checker?

That’s an excellent idea. You should always avoid using the passive voice in writing as much as you can.

But sometimes it isn’t easy to spot when you are doing a quick proofread of your text. A much easier, and more accurate way to locate a passive sentence or passive construction is to use an online checker.

There are many free online tools you can use to help you. The bonus is that many of them will help you find other grammar errors and spelling mistakes as well.

The best tools will give you options or examples to change a phrase written in the passive voice to the active voice. But before I get to my list of useful tools, it worth understanding the difference between active and passive voice.

What is the passive voice?

When you write a sentence using the passive, it doesn’t tell the reader who is doing something. The reader knows something is happening or happened. But they have no way of knowing who did it.

It comes about when the subject of the sentence is not performing the action of the verb in the sentence.

The structure and the form of the verbs are to be plus the past participle. It can also use the verbs to have and to get in the causative form.

With passive voice sentences, we don’t know who is performing the action unless we add an operator.

For example, in the passive voice, the subject is usually a thing and not a person.

This house was built in 1970.We don’t know who built the house because the house receives the action of the verb.

This house was built in 1970 by John.Now we know who built the house because John is the operator. But this house, the sentence subject, is acted upon by the passive verb.

But if we change to the active voice, the subject is a person, and the sentence is much easier to understand.

John built this house in 1970.Now it is clear who built the house.

In the English language, writing in active sentences is always the best option.

You should use the active form in articles, fiction, blog posts and any form of messaging, email or general correspondence.

However, in business and scientific writing, the passive is used a little more frequently.

It is because there may be a need not to say who did something or to apportion blame.

A prepositional phrase is often used to introduce a topic.

In reply to your complaint, your delivery was delayed due to unforeseen circumstance.

In the causative form, which is sometimes called the have or get something done form, again we don’t know who performs the action.

Take a look at these examples to help you identify the problem.

I really need to have my car serviced.

Joe has to get his hair cut before his interview.

You should have your blood pressure checked.

Are you going to get your computer repaired?

In the examples above, we don’t know who is performing the action.

To re-write these sentences in the active form, we need to include a subject that is performing the action.

It is an easy fix. All you need to do is make sure that you have a person as the subject of the sentence who is performing the action of the main verb.

I really need to have the garage service my car.

Joe has to get the barber to cut his hair before his interview.

You should have your doctor check your blood pressure.

Are you going to get Apple to repair your computer?

The active voice is always a much better alternative to the passive. It is clearer and easier for readers to understand.

All you need to do is find the passive structures in your text and re-write them.

The best free tools to find passive sentences and correct them

1. Grammarly

It is no surprise that Grammarly is my number one choice.

That is because I use it every day, day in and day out.

For me, it is always on, so it is only a matter of one click, and I can find and re-write any passive sentences.

Here is a screengrab of my Grammarly editor for this post as I was writing it in WordPress.

You can see the passive structures are highlighted for you. On the right, there is an explanation and examples of how to change the voice.

It makes it easy for me to find any passive forms and quickly change any sentences to active voice.

2. ProWritingAid

Prowritingaid is another writing tool I use a lot.

I use it mostly for checking long-form writing.

But it is an excellent tool for finding and correcting passive structures.

As you can see from the image above, ProwritingAid gives you helpful clues about how to fix your sentences.

The suggestions are based on your sentence, so it is a very quick and easy fix for you.

Just click the one you prefer to automatically change your sentence, or you can edit your sentence using a different subject.

3. Hemingway App

The Hemingway App is very well known as a great passive finder.

This is true. It is super fast and it gives you a very clear green highlight for every passive structure it finds in your writing.

But then it is up to you to change your sentences.

The Hemingway Editor doesn’t give you any examples or hints to help you re-phrase your sentences in the active construction.

4. Ginger Grammar

Ginger grammar is super quick and easy to use as a free Chrome extension.

For bloggers, this is a great free tool to have.

It will work in unison with whatever blog editor you use on your site.

Ginger will clearly highlight and underline any passive forms for you have in your text. Then you can re-write them in the active form.

With the browser extension, you can correct your writing anytime you are writing online.

But one of the bonus features of Ginger is the sentence checker that uses contextual spelling correction.

It will highlight your spelling errors based on the context of your sentence such as mistakes including bare and bear, to and too and many other common homonyms.

Summary

All of the free grammar tools I have mentioned above will do a great job for you. They will help you to write better and more accurately.

They will find your passive structures very fast, and then you can get to work on fixing them.

It doesn’t take much time to change to active sentences to improve your writing clarity.

No matter which one you select to use, you will be making a good choice.

I suppose Grammarly and ProWritingAid stand out for me.

They are the two that give you a little more help when you are re-writing your sentences.