Every writer should know how to change passive sentences to active voice. When you learn how to do it, it opens up many more options in your writing.
You can then choose between active or passive sentences to suit your text or story.
Passive isn’t always bad, just as active isn’t always the best option. When editing, voice is a tool, not a mistake.
Knowing which one to use is a skill, but you can’t use it until you know the basics of these two structures.
The Subject-Verb-Object Swap: A Quick Reference
Changing passive sentences is easy once you know the basics.
The quickest way to change passive sentences to active voice is to identify who or what (the actor) is performing the action and move them to the beginning.
In a passive structure, the subject is being acted upon (often using the word “by”).
In an active structure, the subject performs the action, making the sentence shorter and more meaningful.
As you can see in the chart above, flipping the sentence structure immediately adds energy to your writing. But while this “swap” is the standard rule, an experienced writer knows that the active voice isn’t always the right choice for every sentence.
If you use a writing checker like the Hemingway app, Grammarly, ProWritingAid, or even ChatGPT to check passive usage, they all seem to point to rewriting passive sentences.
But this is not the case at all. Replacing every instance of the passive would mean unnaturally contorting your writing.
Changing from active to passive, or passive to active, is a choice you make, and not a hard and fast rule.
However, to have the choice, you need to be confident that you can change the structures quickly and easily.
When To Change Passive Sentences Without An Operator
When a passive sentence has no operator (the word by), you need to be creative or inventive to rewrite it in active voice. You have to invent or identify a subject to perform the action.
Here’s a classic example: “The house was surrounded.”
Depending on the context, you could make this sentence active and logical.
“High hedges surrounded the house”, or “The police surrounded the house.”
However, in some cases, forcing a sentence into the active voice is illogical or creates clunky redundancy.
Example: “The house was burgled.”
Because the actor is unknown, the only option would be, “A burglar burgled the house.”
In this case, you can easily see that it’s a poor choice. The passive voice is the better option because it keeps the focus on the event rather than a redundant subject.
You can see why it’s always up to you to decide when to rewrite a sentence to change voice.
If you have a sentence saying, “I was told that my car needed a new battery,” yes, it’s probably a good candidate to change.
All you need to do is use who told you as the subject, such as a mechanic. “The mechanic told me my car needed a new battery.”
But if you refer to an action that has an obvious actor, passive can be a distraction.
“Two burglars were arrested the next day for the crime.”
Since only the police can arrest people, there’s no sense in stating the obvious by saying “The police arrested the suspects.” It adds words without adding information.
The Exceptions: When To Keep The Passive Voice
There are situations where it simply isn’t logical to change to the active voice.
Usually, this is because the “actor” is unclear, it’s a universal truth, or the active version would just be plain awkward.
Here are the three most common times you should stay passive:
1. When The Actor Is Irrelevant
“Markus was born in 1923.”
It would be unwieldy and strange to write this in the active voice using his mother as the subject. The focus is on Markus, not the birth process.
2. When The Actor Is Redundant
“The police believe he was murdered.”
Converting this to “The police believe a murderer murdered him” is repetitive and cumbersome. The passive voice keeps the focus on the victim and the crime.
3. General Truths And Idioms
“Some rules are made to be broken.”
This is a general truth where the original speaker is unknown or irrelevant. The passive voice gives the statement a sense of authority and permanence.
In instances like these, the passive voice isn’t a mistake at all. It’s the best tool for the job.
The Causative: The Quiet Passive
The passive voice using the verb to be is obvious and easy to spot and fix. But an experienced writer also knows to keep an eye open for the causative passive.
This structure occurs when we use the forms have/has/had something done or get/got something done.
It says that someone else performed the action for the subject.
When you use the causative passive, you often have the choice to add an “operator” (the person doing the work), but it can often lead to redundancy.
Redundant: “He had his iPhone battery replaced by a technician.” (Since only a technician or specialist usually replaces iPhone batteries, “by a technician” is unnecessary.)
Concise: “He had his iPhone battery replaced.”
When changing causative sentences to the active voice, you need to decide which form is best.
Sometimes the causative passive is the more logical choice because the actor is obvious.
Keep it Causative: “They get their house cleaned every week.” It’s clear a cleaner does the work.
Changing it to “A cleaner cleans their house every week” feels repetitive and adds little value.
Switch to Active: “I got my blood pressure taken.” This can feel a bit clinical or detached.
Changing it to “My doctor took my blood pressure” adds a human element and makes the sentence more direct.
The causative passive is a stylistic tool you can use.
Use it when the service performed is more important than the person performing it.
Switch to active when you want to highlight the individual or the specific action.
When To Change Passive Sentences To Active
There’s no golden rule to follow. However, the overuse of passive sentences will definitely weaken your writing.
As long as you can recognize it and change the voice, you can reduce your use considerably.
In general, though, you can usually change most passive sentences to active quite easily. It will improve your writing clarity and also make it more concise.
But in the case of the causative forms, you will need to use your judgment as to when it’s best to change.
In either case, when you see that there is an action but no actor, it makes the sentence somewhat abstract.
For fiction writers, yes, it’s always best to use active voice as much as possible to make sure your characters perform all the action.
The same applies to article and blog post writing. An active voice is always preferable and more meaningful for readers.
But in business, technical, and academic writing, there is more scope to use the passive voice.
You typically use it to indicate general truths and understandings or to avoid citing responsibility.
If you want to check your passive use, you can always use the Hemingway app. It’s probably the most popular free app for this purpose.
But there are plenty of other apps to check for passive voice.
However, always remember that these apps are your assistants, not your boss.
Use them to flag the passive voice, then use the judgment you’ve learned here to decide if you should change it or keep it.
Summary: Your Voice, Your Choice
There are a lot of skills to writing well, and it takes time to develop them all.
But for me, the number one skill a writer needs is to be able to recognize the passive voice and then be able to change it to the active voice.
Once you know how to do it, it will become a great new writing habit and skill for you to use.
The biggest problem with passive sentences is that they are usually longer, say very little, and can bore a reader if there is too much of it.
It’s also impersonal, indirect, and evasive, and deflects responsibility.
But don’t let your writing become unnaturally contorted just to satisfy a grammar checker.
Every writer needs to decide how much passive to use. While the answer is often as little as possible, there are practical uses for the passive voice.
You can’t avoid it all the time, so don’t make it your new 100% rule.
Related reading: How To Write Reported Speech Dialogue Correctly
