Passive Voice Detector
Paste any text and every passive voice construction is highlighted with its pattern. Shows the ratio and gives you a score. Enterprise content ops standard for plain-language compliance.
Content Intelligence
Passive voice over 10% is where writing starts to feel bureaucratic.
"The decision was made" is passive. "We decided" is active. One sounds like a corporate memo; the other like a human. Keep passive under 10% of sentences for marketing copy, 5% for anything persuasive. Legal, scientific and policy writing can run higher: but even there, 20% is a ceiling.
Paste your text
Editor
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0 passive sentences detected
Score
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Passive %
0%
Active %
100%
Detected passive patterns
Next steps
Passive voice is one of several AI tells
The AI Tell Detector flags passive voice alongside em-dash overuse, filler phrases, and other markers of assembled writing.
Frequently asked questions
What is passive voice?
Sentence structure where the subject receives the action: "The report was written by the team" (passive) vs "The team wrote the report" (active).
How does the detector work?
Pattern matching: form of "be" + past participle. Catches most English passive constructions.
Is passive voice always wrong?
No. Scientific papers use it intentionally. For marketing and journalism, keep passive under 20% of sentences.
What ratio counts as "too much" passive?
Over 20% in a general-audience piece reads flat. Over 10% is fine. Zero is unnatural.
Does Google penalise passive voice?
Not directly. But active voice typically correlates with lower bounce rate and higher dwell time.
What are examples of acceptable passive?
When the actor is unknown ("The window was broken"), unimportant ("The product was launched"), or when passive emphasises the right thing ("Three new features were released this quarter").
Does Hemingway Editor flag the same patterns?
Similar detection. Hemingway is more aggressive and also flags adverbs and complex sentences. This tool focuses on passive specifically.
Can I ignore specific passives?
The tool reports all passives; you decide which to rewrite. No ignore list.
What about "to be" verbs that aren't passive?
"I am happy" is not passive: it is a linking verb. The detector tries to distinguish but may flag edge cases. Review flagged results.
Does the tool work on legal or scientific text?
Yes but expect high passive counts. Different writing conventions. Flag the counts as context, not errors.
Can passive voice damage SEO?
Indirectly through readability and bounce rate. The specific sentences won't trigger penalties.
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