A Rant on Passive voice

 I have just finished arguing with a would-be writer who a) is convinced that passive voice is evil and must be avoided at all times, and b) has, it turns out, no idea at all what passive voice actually is.

I am therefore going to rant.

Passive voice is not when something has been allowed to happen, nor is it a literary device, nor is it any sentence containing "was" or "were. Passive voice is a grammatical term, not a literary device.  Passive voice is a specific type of sentence structure, in wh