on Just Publishing Advice:
Are you looking for a reliable passive voice checker?
That’s an excellent idea. You should always avoid using the passive voice in writing as much as you can.
But sometimes it isn’t easy to spot when you are doing a quick proofread of your text.
A much easier, and more accurate way to locate a passive sentence or passive construction is to use an online checker.
There are many free online tools you can use to help you. The bonus is that many of them will help you find other grammar errors and spelling mistakes as well.
The best tools will give you options or examples to change a phrase written in the passive voice to the active voice.
But before I get to my list of useful tools, it worth understanding the difference between active and passive voice.
Thank you for sharing this. This is something I do need work on, and will have to check out the apps you mentioned.
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While passive voice should be avoided in narrative this does not apply to dialog. We do not stop and think before speaking that we must express something in the active voice. We speak in a mixture of both and characters will too.
Passage from the original post:
– In the causative form, which is sometimes called the have or get something done form, again we don’t know who performs the action.
I really need to have my car serviced.
Joe has to get his hair cut before his interview.
You should have your blood pressure checked.
Are you going to get your computer repaired?
In the examples above, we don’t know who is performing the action. – end of passage.
Well yes, we don’t know who is performing the action (And are they really ‘actions’? They look like speech to me) – but they are assumable.
Because you don’t get your car serviced by a hairdresser, you don’t get your blood pressure checked by the garage, your hair cut by computer technician, or your computer repaired by a doctor (or a plumber).
Yes avoid passive if you can but don’t produce clunky sentences to achieve it.
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