Windows

Get Word To Help You Stop Writing In Passive Voice

Posted by on Apr 11, 2007 | 4 Comments

One of the common mistakes that people, including myself, make when writing documentation is writing in a passive voice. It is a hard habit to break and identifying passive sentences is just as hard.

However, I recently discovered that Word could help me in my quest to write in an active voice. You can configure Word to underline any passive sentences, the same way it underlines spelling mistakes.

To tell Word to watch for passive sentences:

  1. Within Word, click Options from the Tools menu.
  2. Select the Spelling and Grammar tab.
  3. Click the Settings button.
  4. Under the Styles heading, place a check beside the Passive sentences option.
  5. Click OK.

[tags]Word, document, Microsoft Office, word processor, doc[/tags]

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  • http://www.timothyfish.net Timothy Fish

    I use Word’s grammar checker frequently to catch all kind of grammatical errors. Passive voice is not a grammatical error, but I find it helpful to eliminate most of it. I have found that the grammar checker is not always accurate. I have also found that I have a tendency to rewrite sentences that might sound better in the passive voice, just to get rid of all of the “errors.” I have to be very careful to write things the way they should be written rather than how Word tells me to write them. Passive voice is used several times here and it is used to bring attention to the most important points.

  • Yuri Yang

    Does anyone know how reliable Microsoft Word’s passive sentences statistcs are?

  • Costas

    Hello, I’m a Greek translator. Could someone tell me how I can rephrase sentences like “The term of the contract is set to twenty years” or “Since there was no other item of the Agenda to be discussed” from passive voice to active voice?
    I mean, it is not always easy to avoid writting in passive voice, especially when legal terms are concerned and the language from which I translate uses passive voice.