Ok Passive voice is "John was hit in the head by a ball" And Active voice is "A ball hit John in the head" Passive voice isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's good to think about the context you use it in.

The completion of a college degree is an accomplishment that would make most students proud. I am not an exception to this concept. Prior to finishing high school I left home for personal reasons. Shortly after I left, I began working at a company that not only offered great benefits but required a significant portion of my time. So, I dropped out of high school half way through my senior year and began working full time. Although I was able to pay the bills I had remorse over the decision I made about dropping out. Two years later I got married. I was happy and remorse over my decision about high school no longer bothered me. A year later I gave birth to a beautiful son, and a year after that I was divorced. This is when I made the decision to go back to school so that I might be a positive role model for my son. I graduated cum laude from Texas State University in May of 2006. It was a proud and defining moment in my life and my remorse about being s high school drop out is gone.

Microsoft Word grammar checker is an abomination. If most great authors were to have their work checked by it (Passive Voice) it would suggest changes (Active Voice).

1) "In grammar, the voice (also called gender or diathesis) of a verb describes the relationship between the action (or state) that the verb expresses and the participants identified by its arguments (subject, object, etc.). When the subject is the agent or actor of the verb, the verb is in the active voice. When the subject is the patient, target or undergoer of the action, it is said to be in the passive voice. For example, in the sentence: The cat ate the mouse. the verb "ate" is in the active voice, but in the sentence: The mouse was eaten by the cat. the verbal phrase "was eaten" is passive. In a transformation from an active-voice clause to an equivalent passive-voice construction, the subject and the direct object switch grammatical roles. The direct object gets promoted to subject, and the subject demoted to an (optional) complement. In the examples above, the mouse serves as the direct object in the active-voice version, but becomes the subject in the passive version. The subject of the active-voice version, the cat, becomes part of a prepositional phrase in the passive version of the sentence, and could be left out entirely." Source and further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_voice 2) "A grammar checker will find each sentence in a text, look up each word in the dictionary, and then attempt to parse the sentence into a form that matches a grammar. Using various rules, the program can then detect various errors, such as agreement in tense, number, word order, and so on. It is also possible to detect some stylistic problems with the text. For example, heavy use of passive voice is not considered a good writing style. After a sentence is parsed, it is possible to detect passive voice, and rewrite the sentence in proper form." Source and further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammar_checker 3) "Many word processing programs include grammar checkers. Like other computer tools, such as the spellchecker and thesaurus, the grammar checker has both benefits and limitations. Benefits include style choices, grammar suggestions, and readability statistics. Limitations include the use of grammatical terms that many writers do not understand. For instance, grammar checkers may tell the writer that a sentence is written using a verb in the "passive voice," a term unfamiliar to many writers. All action verbs in English grammar have "voice"—either active or passive—depending on whether the subject of the verb is doing the action expressed in the verb or receiving it. If the verb is in the passive voice, the subject is receiving the action expressed in the verb. [In Microsoft Word, sentences written in passive voice are underlined in green.] Examples: A. Ruth decorated (active) her house. B. The house was decorated (passive) by Ruth. A. Kristen performed (active) the solo at the end of the dance recital. B. The solo at the end of the dance recital was performed (passive) by Kristen. A. Kevin fixed (active) the computer. B. The computer was fixed (passive) by Kevin. Generally, sentences with active verbs are preferable to those with passive voice verbs because sentences with active verbs are shorter and more direct. Passive voice verbs consist of a main verb and one or more helping verbs, so the writer needs more words to complete the sentence. Another problem is that, in some sentences with passive verbs, the subject is not stated at all." Source and further information: http://www.write.armstrong.edu/handouts/PassiveVoice.pdf 4) As for the spelling check, the indications of the grammar check are sometimes not perfect, so use also your own judgement. Many sentences can be written in a more simple way using the "active voice" instead of the "passive voice", but this does not mean that you have to avoid this interesting language feature systematically. 5) Further information: - "How to Change Microsoft Word Settings to Check Passive Voice" http://www.ehow.com/how_2273684_change-microsoft-word-settings-check.html - "a little-known feature in Word that displays readability statistics as part of the spelling and grammar check" http://www.badlanguage.net/tools-for-writing-microsoft-word-readability-statistics - "The grammar checker also seems to have a bee in its bonnet over the passive voice, and pulls you up about this on every occasion." http://www.homeandlearn.co.uk/mw/s1p10.html

It means you are writing so that it sounds like something just happened, instead of like somebody did it. "The jewels disappeared from the window" rather than "The thief took the jewels.

Wow, I wish my wife were a Bagger. She could 'splain this English grammar stuff real well. Passive: "The Interface Module was replaced." Active: "Ships Force replaced the Interface Module." Passive: "The boy was bitten." Active: "The dog bit the boy." The difference is that the subject PERFORMS the action expressed by the verb in Active Voice. Passive Voice does not indicate who or what performed the action. So, if you write a sentence read it afterwards and ask yourself "WHO" did this action. Or "WHAT" did this action. If you cannot answer this based upon the information in the sentence, then it is likely written in a Passive Voice. In the examples given above: "The Interface Module was replaced." This is Passive because it does not answer WHO replaced the module. "The boy was bitten." This is passive because it does not answer WHO or WHAT bit the boy. Here is a link that does a better job of explaining: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/grammar/g_actpass.html