Here’s a quick writing tip to improve your content right away.

You may have heard a politician facing a scandal say, “Mistakes were made.” 

This sounds awkward and like they’re avoiding something. Why? It’s using passive voice.  

Here’s a test for passive voice: If your sentence makes (silly) sense when you add “by zombies,” it’s in passive voice. You may want to consider revising. 

• Passive: Mistakes were made (by zombies). 
• Active, centering the thing that happened: Mistakes happened. 
• Active, centering the responsible party: I made mistakes.  

Active is often better, but not always! Passive voice can be useful when your intention is to show that someone didn’t have a say in something – that it happened to them. 

Find more of my favorite writing tips here.