Use the passive voice when you don’t know who is doing an action, or to emphasise that an action is being done to something or someone, rather than focusing on who or what is doing the action. For ...

So I am going to surmise, as it is usually safe to do, that my students have been instructed along the way, that the passive voice is a wicked thing that, like Communism in the 1950s, can be lurking ...

Often, the goal of writing is to inform the reader. News articles, handwritten notes, emails, Facebook posts — they can all give the reader information he didn't already have. But sometimes when ...

Often, the goal of writing is to inform the reader. News articles, hand-written notes, emails, Facebook posts — they can all give the reader information he didn’t already have. But sometimes when ...

This tip on improving your SAT score was provided by Vivian Kerr at Veritas Prep. What does it mean when we say sentences on the SAT should be “active”? A sentence is “active” when the subject of the ...

The passive voice: despised by teachers, maligned by editors, and misunderstood by almost everyone. For over a century, this grammatical construction has been the bogeyman of English writing, blamed ...

One "rule" that many self-appointed experts on writing return to again and again is: "Don't use the passive!" Or, as some puckishly put it, "The passive voice should be avoided." The passive voice is ...