Your English teacher probably drew a red squiggle under every passive sentence you ever wrote. Here is the awkward truth: the passive voice isn’t bad grammar. It’s a perfectly good tool that people reach for at the wrong moment, like using a hammer to open a bottle.
Used well, it’s invisible. Used badly, it turns your writing into fog. The trick is knowing which is which.
What the passive actually is
Start with the mechanics, because vague advice about “avoiding passive” is useless if you can’t spot one.
An active sentence puts the doer first: “Sam wrote the report.” Sam does the writing. Sam is the subject.
The passive flips it. The thing being acted on moves to the front: “The report was written by Sam.” Now the report is the subject, even though it didn’t do anything.
The recipe is simple and worth memorising: a form of be plus a past participle. Was written. Is being repaired. Have been reviewed. The doer, if it appears at all, hides in a “by” phrase at the end.
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Notice something in that middle example. The passive lets you drop the doer entirely. Sometimes that’s a gift. Sometimes it’s a dodge. Hold that thought.
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If you can add "by zombies" after the verb and it still makes grammatical sense, you're looking at a passive. “The report was written… by zombies.” Yes. It’s passive. Silly, but it works every time.
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When the passive is the right call
Here’s where the red squiggle gets it wrong. There are four situations where the passive is not just acceptable but genuinely better.
1. Nobody knows who did it
Your bike vanishes from outside a café in London. You don’t know the thief. So you say “My bike was stolen.”
Try forcing that into the active. “Someone stole my bike.” That “someone” is empty noise. The passive quietly admits the doer is unknown and moves on. Cleaner.
2. The doer doesn’t matter
Science writing lives here. In a lab report, who pressed the button is irrelevant. What happened to the samples is the whole point.
“The samples were heated to 90°C and left for an hour.” Nobody wants to read “Maria heated the samples, then Maria left them.” The method matters; Maria doesn’t.
3. You want the focus on the receiver
English tends to put the important thing first. If your sentence is really about the receiver, let the receiver lead.
A sentence about a famous building should probably start with the building: “The tower was completed in 1889 and is visited by millions every year.” Starting with the anonymous crews and tourists would bury the subject you actually care about.
4. You want a neutral, formal tone
Official notices, instructions and academic writing often prefer the passive because it sounds impersonal and steady.
“Applications must be submitted by Friday.” That’s cleaner than “You must submit your application by Friday” when it’s pinned to a noticeboard for a thousand people. No single “you” is being singled out.
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When the passive quietly ruins your writing
Now the other side. The passive causes three specific problems, and once you can name them, you’ll spot them everywhere.
It goes vague
Because the passive can hide the doer, lazy writing uses it to skip information the reader actually wants.
“The decision was taken to close the branch.” Taken by whom? A board? One manager? The sentence refuses to say, and the reader is left guessing.
It gets wordy
The passive almost always needs more words than the active. Those extra “was” and “by” bits add up across a page.
“A full review of the accounts was carried out by the team” is twelve words doing the job of five: “The team reviewed the accounts.” Same meaning, half the fat.
It dodges responsibility
This is the famous one. Politicians and companies love the passive precisely because it lets them describe a disaster without naming who caused it.
“Mistakes were made.” By whom? The sentence is grammatically complete and morally empty. Compare “We made mistakes,” which owns the problem. When someone dodges “by,” ask yourself why.
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How to spot and fix a weak passive
You don’t need to hunt down every passive in your writing. You need a two-question filter.
First: find them. Look for a “be” verb (is, am, are, was, were, be, been, being) sitting next to a past participle. The zombie test from earlier confirms it.
Then ask two questions.
Does the reader need to know who did this? If yes, and the sentence hides it, that’s a weak passive. Name the doer.
Is this shorter and clearer as an active sentence? If yes, flip it. If the active version sounds clumsy or forces in an empty “someone,” keep the passive. It was doing a job.
To fix one, find who did the action, put them at the front, and let the verb follow. “The window was broken” becomes “A cricket ball broke the window” — assuming you know it was the ball. If you don’t, the passive stays. That’s the whole point.
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The one rule that covers everything
Forget the red squiggle. Ask instead: does the doer matter here?
If the doer matters and you’ve hidden them, you’ve written a weak passive. Fix it. If the doer is unknown, dull, or obvious, the passive is quietly doing you a favour. Leave it be.
Grammar isn’t a list of banned words. It’s a set of choices, and now you know which one to make.
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< No. It's fully correct English. The advice to "avoid the passive" is really advice to avoid weak, vague or wordy passives — not a grammar rule. Look for a form of "be" (is, was, were, been) next to a past participle. If you can add "by zombies" after the verb and it still reads sensibly, it's passive. Because the person doing the action often doesn't matter to the reader. Lab reports care about the method, not who ran it, and official notices aim for a neutral, impersonal tone. No, and that's exactly why people misuse it. Dropping "by" can be honest (the doer is unknown) or evasive (the doer is hiding). Always check which one you're doing.Frequently asked questions
Is the passive voice grammatically wrong?
How do I quickly tell if a sentence is passive?
Why do scientists and officials use so much passive voice?
Does the passive always need "by"?
Sources & further reading