50 years after its publication, Strunk & White's "Elements of Style" still influences our thinking about language, particularly our disapproval of the passive voice. But our linguist Geoff Nunberg ...

Even when you think you’ve got a handle on grammar, you might not realize how easy it is easy to unwittingly venture into lexical territory that would rile your freshman year English teacher.

This handout is also available for download in PDF format. We refer to a sentence as being in the "active voice" when the subject is performing the action of the sentence (the verb). A sentence is in ...

Below is a brief exercise in identifying passive voice constructions. Read each sentence below. If you think that it contains a passive voice construction, click YES; if you think that it does not ...

For many writers, feedback that your copy is "too passive" can be frustrating. The passive voice is, after all, grammatically correct. But there's a reason that public relations and communications ...

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 ...

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 ...

As a group, scientists are not widely admired for their prose style. To no small extent, this derives from their insistence on the passive voice, that boogeyman of basic composition classes.

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, ...

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 ...