proofread for passive voice & build connection with your audience

Do you know the difference between passive voice and active voice? More importantly, how does each affect your reader?

Active voice means the subject of the sentence is doing the action of the verb rather than receiving it.

Active voice: “Tania wrote her blog post for today”

Passive voice: “The blog post for today was written by Tania”

🔬Passive voice is mainly used in academics and scientific research - when the facts are in focus and the human element is secondary.

It creates a cold, formal tone that distances your reader and deflates your message.

What’s more, it increases your word count with unnecessary fluff.

Not so great for effective marketing. Much better to switch to active voice.

But how? 👇

You can find passive voice in your copy in 3 steps...

Step 1: press CTRL-F to search your writing for the word “by”

This will highlight sentences in your copy where the subject‘s *receiving* the action.

Step 2: look at the main verb of the sentence (passive voice uses two verbs be + main verb)

Step 3: change the sentence to make the subject *do* the action.

This will remove the “by” phrase, lower the word count, and increase the clarity and warmth of your copy. 👌

Note that not all passive sentences contain a subject in a by phrase. In this case, you can search and alter them by their structure: a form of be + a verb in the past. (was written, were created etc.)