Find passive voice

Flag sentence patterns that may use passive voice for editorial review.

freeworks offlinenothing uploaded
ToolPassive Voice Finder
Input
Output
—
Put this on your own site

The frame below runs the same code as this page, in the reader's own browser. Nothing is sent to us, and nothing is sent to you.

Pick a dark background and the text and panels follow it, so the frame stays readable on a dark page.

Preview

How it works

Sentences are tokenized and matched for forms of be or get followed by a past participle, with optional by-phrases used as supporting evidence. The heuristic flags candidates for review because irregular verbs and adjectival participles create false positives.

  • Surface patterns are fast and explainable but cannot replace syntactic judgment.

Worked example

Two passive sentences, one active
The regex looks for a be-verb next to an -ed or -en word
Input
											The cake was baked by her. The dog was walked. She is running quickly.
Output
												"was baked" - character 9
"was walked" - character 35

When to use this

Technical editing, student essays, and policy reviews inspect whether responsibility is explicit.

Edge cases

  • The door is closed can describe a state rather than passive voice.
  • Get promoted is passive-like with different semantics.
  • A by-phrase can occur in a non-passive prepositional phrase.