The first rule of writing might be “show, don’t tell”, but the second is surely “use active verbs”. Almost every book I have on writing emphasizes the use of the active voice over the passive. Read on to discover the difference.

Verbs have two voices, either active or passive. When you use the active voice, the subject performs the action and the verb expresses the action. For example, Gail opened the book. The subject is Gail, the verb opens, and the object is book.

When you use the passive voice, the subject becomes the passive recipient of the action. For example: Gail opened the book. The passive voice will have a “double verb”: a form of the verb “to be” and the past participle of another verb, often ending in “ed” as in “was opened.” Generic verbs like – is, are, were, was, be, being, been, be, had and have – don’t convey much and the passive voice can make a sentence confusing. The active voice is short, direct, and easier to understand.

Sometimes it’s okay to use the passive voice, like when the reader doesn’t need to know who did the action. Example: the building was erected hundreds of years ago. The perpetrator of the action is unknown or unimportant.

If you look up the forms of “to be”, you can see where you are using the passive voice. Microsoft Word 2003 provides an easy way to check readability and passive voice. Just go to the Tools menu and click on Options, then click on the Spelling and Grammar tab. Select the check box to Check grammar with spelling. Also select the Show readability statistics check box. Click OK. Highlight the document you want to view. Click the abc icon on the toolbar, press F7, or go to Tools and click Spelling and Grammar. Word will check your highlighted document and then display reading level information.

You will get a chart showing the count of words, characters, paragraphs and sentences. It will also show average sentences per paragraph, words per sentence, and characters per word. In the readability section, there are three useful stats. The first thing that appears is the percentage of passive sentences: the closer to zero, the better. Next is the Flesch Reading Ease score, which is rated on a 100-point scale. The higher your score, the easier it is to read your writing. The last one is the Flesch-Kincaid grade level. He qualifies at a US school grade level. If he gets a 7, then a 7th grader will understand his writing.

This is just one tool and there is much more that goes into good writing. But it can provide useful information that will help you improve what you’ve written.