Passive Voice & Writing Style Checker

About the Passive Voice & Writing Style Checker

Paste your text — or open a Word, PDF, OpenDocument, RTF, HTML or Markdown file — and every habit that makes writing slower to read is highlighted: passive voice (“the form was sent”), wordy phrases with plainer alternatives (“in order to” → “to”), hedges (“I think”, “perhaps”), weasel words that hide who is speaking (“studies show”), intensifiers and filler (“very”, “actually”), repeated words (“the the”), a/an mistakes (“a hour”, “an user”) and long sentences.

Each issue has a count, and selecting it jumps to it in your text so you can fix it there. Simple mistakes — a doubled word, the wrong article — can be corrected with one click. The checker follows published plain-language guidance: the US Federal Plain Language Guidelines (prefer the active voice, choose simple words) and GOV.UK’s advice to split sentences over 25 words. It works offline, on your device, and is a style aid — not a full grammar checker.

Common uses

• Editing reports, policies and letters into plain English before they go to customers or the public.
• Checking essays and assignments for passive voice and wordiness, as many style guides and teachers ask.
• Tightening web copy, product descriptions and e-mails so they are quicker to read.
• Catching doubled words and a/an slips that a quick proofread misses.

What each check looks for

• Passive voice — a form of “to be” (is, are, was, were, be, been, being, they’re …), up to three adverbs, then a past participle: “was written”, “are usually sent”, “has been approved”. Words that usually describe a state (“I am tired”, “she was interested”, “he is left-handed”, “we are very organised”) are flagged only when “by” follows. The Federal Plain Language Guidelines identify passives the same way: a form of “to be” plus a past participle.
• Wordy phrases — 120 wordy phrases and pompous words (with their other forms, such as utilized and utilizing) and plainer alternatives, mostly from the plain-language word list of the Federal Plain Language Guidelines (“utilize” → “use”, “prior to” → “before”, “in the event that” → “if”) and GOV.UK’s “words to avoid” (“going forward” → “from now on”).
• Hedges — phrases that signal doubt (“I think”, “perhaps”, “seems to”, “sort of”). Uses with another meaning, such as “I think of” or “what kind of”, are skipped.
• Weasel words — claims without a source (“studies show”, “experts agree”, “it is believed”). Say who.
• Intensifiers — “very”, “really”, “extremely”, “quite” … before the word they boost, and fillers such as “actually” or “basically”. For over 70 “very + adjective” pairs a single stronger word is suggested (“very tired” → “exhausted”).
• Repeated words — the same word twice in a row, even across a line break. Correct repeats such as “had had” and “that that” are allowed.
• A or an — by the sound of the next word: an hour, a university, a European, an MBA, a URL, an 8, an 18-year-old, an NHS-run hospital. Words whose sound is unclear (“historic”, “herb”, abbreviations without a vowel such as “Mr” or “html”) and the letter a used as a name (“if a and b are equal”) are never flagged.
• Long sentences — more words than the limit you choose. The default, 25, follows GOV.UK’s guidance to split up sentences over 25 words.

Why plain-language guides prefer the active voice

The Federal Plain Language Guidelines say active voice makes it clear who does what, and that passive voice obscures who is responsible — compare “The lake was polluted by the company” with “The company polluted the lake”. Passive voice is not wrong: it is the right choice when the doer is unknown or does not matter (“The building was finished in 1910”), so treat each highlight as a question, not an error.

Sources

• Federal Plain Language Guidelines (Plain Language Action and Information Network, US, 2011): “Use active voice” and “Use simple words and phrases”. Public domain; archived at github.com/GSA/plainlanguage.gov.
• GOV.UK, Writing to GOV.UK standards: use clear language (“Try to split up sentences that are over 25 words long”) and the A to Z style guide, “Words to avoid”.

Limitations

• English only. The checks follow word lists and patterns; they do not understand meaning, so some highlights are fine as written and some problems are not caught.
• Passives built with “get” (“got fired”) and passives with the verb before the subject (“Was the form sent?”) are not detected.
• This is not a grammar or spelling checker: use the Spell Checker for typos and the Readability Checker for grade-level scores.
• Scanned PDFs have no text to check; make them searchable with OCR PDF first. Old .doc files must be saved as .docx.
• Very long texts are checked in full, but only the first 100,000 characters are shown highlighted.

Privacy

Everything happens in your browser. What you enter or open here is not uploaded or stored by MySmartCoPilot. Opening a PDF downloads the PDF engine and an English word list (for joining words hyphenated at line ends) once, about 0.7 MB; your files and text never leave your device.