A sentence is in the passive voice when its grammatical subject is the receiver of the action. PASSIVE: The ball was hit by the boy. When the doer of the action in a sentence is the subject, the sentence is in the active voice. ACTIVE: The boy hit the ball. The passive voice is sometimes needed 1. to emphasize the object of the sentence, 2. to vary the rhythm of the text, or 3. to avoid naming an unimportant actor. EXAMPLE: The appropriations were approved. Although passive sentences are sometimes needed, psychological research has shown that they are harder to comprehend than active sentences. Because of this you should transform as many of your passives to actives as possible. You can use the _s_t_y_l_e program to find all your sentences with passive verbs in them, by typing the following command when this program is finished. style -p filename