It depends what you're using it for. As an academic, I used passive voice all the time. My students - well, the department's students - were all taught to write their essays in passive voice, and would be pulled up if personal pronouns appeared. That's standard in UK/Irish universities. Academic articles and books are also written in passive voice.
(I just realised that most of that paragraph is written in passive voice!).
Uh... there's nothing passive about that paragraph except the last sentence. It's past tense, but not passive voice. If you wrote "As an academic, passive voice was used by me all the time" that would be passive voice. In active voice, the subject performs the action (I used). In passive voice, the subject receives the action (passive voice was used).
I was taught not to use passive voice back when dinosaurs still roamed the earth.
It's still frowned upon but like any writing, there are exceptions to the rule. One of the big problems with passive voice is that is can create awkward sentence. One clue that something is passive is the use of the word "by."
Academic articles and books are also written in passive voice.
This sentence is interesting. It's passive but the agent, or person performing the action, has been left out. You could re-write it in active voice by saying "Scholars write academic articles and books in passive voice." In the original sentence, "by scholars (or whomever)" is understood but not stated.
I've struggled with passive voice for ages and have been studying it lately. So I had a
nifty site bookmarked.
