passive voice

npm module for detecting passive voice.

Based on this shell script.

Install

npm install passive-voice

Use

var passive = require('passive-voice');

var problems = passive('He was judged.');
// problems -> [{ index: 3, offset: 10 }]

The Preposition "By"

In scientific writing, it's sometimes more reasonable to use passive voice:

The mixture was heated to 300°C.

Still, it's easy to restate with an active voice passive constructions followed by the preposition "by."

For example:

The mixture was heated by the apparatus to 300°C.

Versus:

The apparatus heated the mixture to 300°C.

For this case, you can pass { by: true } as a second argument to passive to only flag such constructions as problematic:

var passive = require('passive-voice');

var problems = passive('The mixture was heated to 300°C.', { by: true });
// problems -> []

var problems = passive('The mixture was heated by the apparatus to 300°C.', { by: true });
// problems -> [{ index: 12, offset: 13 }]

See Also

• write-good - a module for linting English

License

MIT