Active voice
Sentence shape where the subject does the acting: 'We deleted your file', not 'Your file was deleted'.
See it
What it is
In active voice, the grammatical subject performs the action: 'We deleted your file.' In passive voice the subject receives it, and the actor can vanish entirely: 'Your file was deleted', or the famous non-apology 'mistakes were made.' Active sentences are usually shorter, land faster, and answer the question a reader is already asking, which is who is responsible for this. The doer does not have to sit at the front of the sentence, it just has to be the subject: 'Last Tuesday, support deleted your file' is still active.
Reach for active in anything instructional or persuasive: button labels, docs, onboarding steps, headlines, release notes. A quick test on any suspect sentence is to append 'by zombies' after the verb. If 'the settings were updated by zombies' still parses, it is passive.
Gotcha: passive is not a grammar error, and blanket search-and-destroy makes copy worse. Passive is the right call when the actor is unknown ('the account was created in 2019'), when the object is the real subject, or when naming the actor would blame the reader. 'Your card was declined' beats 'You entered a dead card.' Also, not every 'was' is passive: 'she was writing' is past progressive and 'the file was corrupt' is a plain description, and grammar checkers flag both anyway. Meanwhile 'your file got deleted' is passive even though there is no 'was' in sight.
Ask AI for it
Rewrite the passive clauses in this text into active voice wherever doing so improves clarity. Identify clauses whose grammatical subject receives the action, covering both be-passives ('was updated', 'is being reviewed', 'has been sent') and get-passives ('got deleted'). Do not flag progressive uses of 'be' ('she was writing'), adjectival ones ('the file was corrupt'), or plain copular sentences. Name the actor only when the source text establishes who it is; never invent one. Prefer strong verbs over noun phrases: 'we decided' not 'a decision was made'. Keep any passive that is justified because the actor is unknown or irrelevant, or because naming them would blame the reader for an error. Output the rewrite, then list each change as 'before -> after' with a one-line reason for anything left passive.