That said, I’m starting to think that the passive voice doesn’t exist outside the famous example, “mistakes were made”. There is a quite well-known take-down of Strunk and White which makes the case that not a single of their passive voice examples are actually passive voice.

Oh well.

Here’s the thing: phrases that de-emphasize the agent are boring. Phrases where the subject passively receives the action are boring. Phrases that describe the subject’s behaviors as a state of their being, rather than as an action, are boring. “He was standing” — standing is a thing he was, not an action he did; “he stood” is much more active and interesting.

Call it — and me — what you will. The bottom line is that if you’re using “is” statements in every sentence, you’re boring the crap out of me. And probably most of your other, non-me readers as well. Even though Strunk and White were idiots.

The Fonz stood against the wall is past tense. It’s ambiguous on its own, but clear in context (e.g. ‘when Joanie arrived, the Fonz stood against the wall’ means he wasn’t standing against the wall when she arrived but did so soon after).

Use the directions for Word 2007 to highlight the phrases you want. If you have trouble getting the highlighting to “stick,” try changing the highlight color while the Find window is still open (and before clicking on the document itself).

To remove the highlighting, simply set highlight color to None, then Select All (Command + A) and hit the highlight button (in the Formatting Toolbar).