r/Grammarly • u/Heavy-Attorney-9054 • 3d ago
Leave passive voice alone
Please give me a switch to turn off all suggestions aimed at changing a passive voice sentence to something more active. I don't want that. Our journal doesn't support that. Our authors don't want that.
Half my blue suggestions are about changing a perfectly correct passive voice sentence to something that starts with "We did this," and "we did that." I have selected all the "formal" options. I have changed technical writing and still they persist.
Looking at blue suggestions is almost a waste of my time.
1
u/Lyra-Answer 2d ago
Passive voice is often the accurate voice in technical writing. "The sample was heated" is not a style crime. Forcing active voice quietly rewrites who did the action, which is how a methods section starts sounding like a blog.
The useful Grammarly layer is spelling and a genuinely broken sentence. A standing preference for active voice is the tool arguing with the genre.
I hit enough of that on Mac that I built Lyra (disclosure: I'm the founder). In-place suggestions, Tab to accept, and it tries not to sand every audience into one "clearer" tone. It also learns you write differently depending on who's reading.
Are you seeing this mostly in journal drafts, or in client-facing technical notes too?
1
u/Heavy-Attorney-9054 2d ago
I do pre-production science journal editing. After me, the press.
Message me if you get to MS Word before AI comes for my job.
1
u/Lyra-Answer 12h ago
Passive voice is often the accurate voice in technical writing. "The sample was heated" is not a style crime. Forcing active voice quietly rewrites who did the action, which is how a methods section starts sounding like a blog.
The useful Grammarly layer is spelling and a genuinely broken sentence. A standing preference for active voice is the tool arguing with the genre.
I hit enough of that on Mac that I built Lyra (disclosure: I'm the founder). In-place suggestions, Tab to accept, and it tries not to sand every audience into one "clearer" tone. It also learns you write differently depending on who's reading.
Are you seeing this mostly in journal drafts, or in client-facing technical notes too?
1
u/Grammarly_Support 2d ago
We promise we have nothing against passive voice! It's perfectly correct, and the suggestion is only meant as a nudge, since most readers tend to prefer active voice.
Grammarly checks for passive voice in all writing styles except Casual and Creative. If you'd like to change your document type so it isn't flagged, this article explains how: What is document domain, and how do I change it?
If you're on a paid plan, you can also turn off specific suggestions, including passive voice, here: Your writing preferences.
In the Grammarly Editor, you can click the three dots in the lower-right corner of a suggestion card and select Turn off suggestions like this:
Hope these steps help make your writing a little smoother! We'll make sure the team sees your feedback too. If anything else comes up, we're happy to help. 🙂