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A critical thinker would try to find a sentence that sounds best in the active voice, then try to find one that works best in the passive voice. Succeeding both times, he would then conclude that both are useful.

Specifically, the passive voice allows you to mention the action while omitting the actor. This is sometimes useful, other times harmful.

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A mean spirited person would manage to slip a dig at someone's critical thinking skills into an otherwise well-taken comment. Not that this paragraph implies anything about the comment I'm replying to.

(Seriously, wtf)

Using passive voice is also a characteristic error of young bad writers. I would not presume to tell an old good writer how to do their job.

And incidentally, it doesn't take the awesome might of my critical thinking army, arrayed like the crusaders going to war, pennons snapping in the wind, to point out that there are better reasons to avoid the passive voice than 'MS Grammar Check says so'.

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