There’s a neat trick – first suggested, as far as I can discover, by the American academic Rebecca Johnson – for identifying a passive construction in case of doubt. Try adding ‘by zombies’ after the verb. If you can do so, you’re looking at the passive voice.
‘Everyone loves by zombies’, America’s Got Talent, is recognisably not English. ‘America’s Got Talent is loved by zombies’ is not only a grammatical sentence, but probably true.
One of the oldest and most persistent writer’s tips is that you should prefer the active to the passive voice; or, in its extreme form, that you should always avoid the passive.
Excerpt from: Write to the Point: How to be Clear, Correct and Persuasive on the Page by Sam Leith
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