The first writing rule 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 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 is open, 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 open”. 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, such as when the reader doesn’t need to know who performed the action. Example: The building was erected hundreds of years ago. The author 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 for readability and the passive voice. Just go to the Tools menu and click Options, then click 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 averages of 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 scored on a 100-point scale. The higher your score, the easier your writing will be to read. The last is the Flesch-Kincaid grade level. Scores at a US school grade level. If you get a 7, then a 7th grader will understand your writing.

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