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I am writing an essay and this is a part of my introduction:

This essay is twofold; first, the undergoing changes are elaborated. How these changes have negatively affected our life is something that is discussed in the latter part.

Grammarly highlights the passive verbs and marks them as "misuse". Does it mean that I would better to use active voice? Or there is another problem with these usage? I think they are grammatically correct. Unfortunately I do not have a premium account therefore I can't see why grammarly has tagged them as error.

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  • I'm guessing grammarly is wrong; it would make sense to me, that such software would miss the nuance of dropping into passive voice to note intent in an essay. It is a pretty high level abstraction to take into account.
    – Justin Stafford
    Jan 20, 2021 at 5:20
  • I think maxbear123 handles this well. But looking again, you might also improve it a little by removing "is something that" - it makes the statement a little too weak, to me. Or you could say "...affected our life is a focus of the latter part." or something similar, if you really don't want to sound like that is the only thing discussed.
    – Justin Stafford
    Jan 20, 2021 at 6:16

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I think Grammarly is giving you this message because you use "changes" without actually stating what the changes are to. After changes, you should say what the changes are to. E.G. "changes to European fiscal policy".

I would also be concerned with the grammatical errors in this sentence.

It is understandable, but an essay cannot be "twofold". The purpose of an essay can be "twofold". Also, changes cannot be "undergoing," as "to undergo" is a verb, not an adjective or a noun. Something/someone, however, can be undergoing changes. I would change these two sentences into:

"The purpose of this essay is twofold: to elaborate on the ongoing changes to European fiscal policy [change this to whatever you are talking about] and--in the later part--to discuss how these changes have negatively affected our life."

^This is assuming you meant "ongoing" by "undergoing."

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  • Also, just as future advice, I wouldn't worry about passive voice too much. As a native speaker, I sometimes get this wrong, so no one is going to really care unless you are writing a book.
    – maxbear123
    Jan 20, 2021 at 6:26

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