Clean, Active Writing Sells Product (Period)

DECODING PASSIVE VOICE
Although I have a BA in history and an MA in journalism, I don’t edit like a tweed-wearing, ruler-cracking, cat-eye-glassed English professor.

That said, I do think it’s good to reduce the amount of passive voice used in marketing copy. Sometimes using passive voice is acceptable (like right there), but usually it just adds another layer of code which the reader must decipher. Some examples:

- are always
- it was
- is becoming
- it’s
- generally: was, is, are, were, should be, can be + verb

Some might argue that the present forms, like "is coming," "are appearing," etc, are not technically passive. It’s best to weed these out, though. Use active verbs that stand alone.
Search for these words in your documents, do a little rewriting, and you’ll be fine.

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