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by j_bum 617 days ago
To quickly determine passive vs. active voice, you can add the phrase, “by zombies” to the end of the sentence.

If it’s clear the zombies are doing the action (subject), then the content is passive voice. Otherwise, if the zombies are an adverbial phrase, the sentence is in active voice.

Passive voice: “Content is synced by zombies”

Active voice: “NotesHub syncs the content by zombies”
2 comments
rangerelf 617 days ago
"Thanks" for making me spit my coffee, that's hilarious but awesome; I will be using it in the future. :-D
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j_bum 617 days ago
Glad you liked it :)

When I started grad school and was learning how to write effectively, I struggled with passive/active voice differentiation… until I learned the zombies tip. It’s so absurd that you can’t forget it, and it’s simple enough to differentiate the two in a split second!

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grvdrm 616 days ago
Amazing. Active vs passive confuses so many folks.

Great three part series on that topic and others:

https://jasonzweig.com/on-writing-better-part-1/

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