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 ...

Whether you write on a part- or full-time basis, you can benefit from becoming more familiar with an often-overlooked aspect of writing that is treated in today’s column: active and passive voice ...

Microsoft Word 2010 can help punch up your document's prose by alerting you when you use passive voice in a sentence. If you write "the goal was achieved" instead of the more active "we achieved the ...

For many writers, feedback that your copy is "too passive" can be frustrating. The passive voice is, after all, grammatically correct. But there's a reason that public relations and communications ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Laura Brown writes about business communication. If you’ve ever had any writing training, either at school or on the job, you’ve ...

The passive voice focuses more on an action that took place and places less importance on the person who performed the action. Writers who use passive voice may cause headaches and frustration among ...

The great thing about being a grammar expert is you don’t have to know anything about grammar to be one. Just launch a blog, say whatever you think is true and bask in the certainty that no one will ...

THE cult of the active voice is one of the most enduring in English grammar. From grade school onwards most everybody is taught that sentences in the active voice are the end-all and be-all of English ...

Sign up for The Media Today, CJR’s daily newsletter. Strunk & White hated it. George Orwell did, too. Nearly every grammar text and English teacher say it: The ...

I blogged a short while ago about some people’s tendency to mislabel usages they dislike as “passive voice.” But even phrases that really are in the passive voice are often better than their ...