“Was” isn’t your enemy—here’s what passive voice is really all about

Hearing the advice that “was” is passive voice never fails to set my eye twitching.

“Was” (or “were”)by itself isn’t passive voice.

Does it signal weak writing? Sure. An excessive use of “was” means your verb use lacks variety—and it’s often a sign of telling, not showing.

When I reviewed six automatic editing tools for The Write Life, most tools failed miserably at flagging passive constructions properly.

Passive voice, as a grammatical construction, requires a lot more than “was.”

In fact,...