I have never heard this from anyone except Microsoft Word Grammar Check.
An English teacher told my class that it's often used to lie. I think she was right. Maybe it'd be better to say that it is often used to mask the truth (hey, we were fourteen or fifteen, and subtlety wasn't exactly one of our strengths). Consider the difference between "mistakes were made" and "I screwed up."
(On the other hand, also consider the difference between "I screwed up" and "we screwed up." You can still play fast and loose with the truth using the active voice.)
I think it's fair to say that overuse of the passive voice is often associated with strained credibility, so you'd often be better off avoiding it, or at least using it sparingly. Of course, sometimes it reads more smoothly, and in those cases you should use it.
However, if you're writing fiction, passive voice is your friend. My high school teachers never realized this despite handing out creative fiction assignments.
Passive voice is for lab reports, research papers, similar scientific/engineering documentation, although I also see a lot of "we" used in papers, especially CS papers.
The use of active voice in scientific papers is an increasing trend. In the old days it was thought more scientifically appropriate to merely state that things were done without personalizing it, but gradually folks came to realise that scientific papers are hard enough to read already and that page after page of passive voice just makes it harder.
Well, I certainly agree that it's typically harder to write a long document in the passive voice. Describing what I did accurately and clearly is a big enough challenge without also having to contort everything into the passive voice.
I have never heard this from anyone except Microsoft Word Grammar Check.
An English teacher told my class that it's often used to lie. I think she was right. Maybe it'd be better to say that it is often used to mask the truth (hey, we were fourteen or fifteen, and subtlety wasn't exactly one of our strengths). Consider the difference between "mistakes were made" and "I screwed up."
(On the other hand, also consider the difference between "I screwed up" and "we screwed up." You can still play fast and loose with the truth using the active voice.)
I think it's fair to say that overuse of the passive voice is often associated with strained credibility, so you'd often be better off avoiding it, or at least using it sparingly. Of course, sometimes it reads more smoothly, and in those cases you should use it.