Highlight passive voice in your writing

Active voice makes writing clearer, more direct, and more engaging. In active voice, the subject performs the action (Sarah wrote the report). In passive voice, the action happens to the subject (The report was written by Sarah). Weak writing overuses passive voice, making sentences vague and indirect (mistakes were made, the decision was reached, results were observed). Strong writing uses active voice by default, saving passive only for specific situations where it's actually better (when the actor is unknown, unimportant, or when you want to emphasize what happened over who did it).

Passive voice weakens writing in predictable ways. It obscures responsibility (mistakes were made doesn't say who made them). It adds unnecessary words (the report was written by Sarah has 7 words while Sarah wrote the report has 4). It distances the reader from the action (you were emailed vs we emailed you). It slows reading pace because readers must work harder to understand who did what. In most business and marketing writing, active voice outperforms passive by making messages clearer and more persuasive.

To improve your writing, catch passive voice and convert most instances to active. Change (the product was launched by our team) to (our team launched the product). Change (the decision was made to postpone) to (we decided to postpone). Keep passive voice only when the actor is truly unimportant (the building was constructed in 1920) or unknown (my car was stolen). Some scientific and academic writing uses passive intentionally to emphasize objectivity, but even in those contexts, overuse makes writing tedious. Most writers unconsciously overuse passive voice. Highlighting it makes the problem visible so you can fix it.