Active & Passive Voice
Two ways to build the same sentence, and knowing when each one is the right choice.
Who is doing the action?
The voice of a sentence tells you whether the subject is doing the action or receiving it.
Active: "The cat chased the mouse." The cat does the chasing.
Passive: "The mouse was chased by the cat." The mouse receives the action.
Both sentences report the same event. What changes is what the sentence puts first, and therefore what it emphasises.
How to build the passive
Three moves, in order:
- Move the object to the front.
- Change the verb to a form of be + past participle.
- Put the original subject at the end after by, or leave it out.
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The letter was written by Ali.
The tense must stay the same. Present "writes" becomes "is written", not "was written".
Keeping the tense right
The form of be carries the tense. The main verb never changes once it is a past participle.
present: The room is cleaned.past: The room was cleaned.
future: The room will be cleaned.
continuous: The room is being cleaned.
So when you convert a sentence, decide the tense first, choose the right form of "be", and the rest follows.
Converting, step by step
Sentence: "The students will complete the project tomorrow."
Step 1: find the three parts. Subject = the students. Verb = will complete. Object = the project.
Step 2: object to the front. "The project…"
Step 3: the verb. Future tense, so "will be" + the past participle "completed".
Step 4: the doer, with "by".
The project will be completed by the students tomorrow.Check: same tense, same meaning, different emphasis. All three tests pass.
When the passive is the better choice
Teachers often say "avoid the passive", but that is too blunt. The passive is right in four situations:
1. The doer is unknown. "My bicycle was stolen." You do not know who took it.
2. The doer does not matter. "The bridge was built in 1954." Who laid the bricks is not the point.
3. Scientific writing. "The mixture was heated to 80°C." The focus belongs on the procedure, not the person.
4. Being tactful. "A mistake was made" avoids naming anyone, which is also why politicians like it.
Otherwise prefer the active: it is shorter, clearer and says who is responsible.
Reading with the voice in mind
Once you can spot the passive, you notice when it is being used to hide something.
"Prices have been increased", by whom? The passive quietly removes the person responsible. "The company increased prices" is the same fact with the responsibility restored.
In your own writing: use the active for stories and arguments, where you want energy and a clear actor. Use the passive in reports and experiments, where the process matters more than the person.
Being able to choose is the real skill. Neither voice is better in the abstract.
Where it usually goes wrong
- Changing the tense during conversion.
- "Passive is always wrong." It is the right choice more often than people think.
- Trying to make a passive from a verb with no object. "She slept" cannot become passive.
- Forgetting the past participle. "was write" should be "was written".
- Confusing the past tense with the passive. "He walked" is active and past.
What to remember
- Active: subject does. Passive: subject receives.
- Passive = be + past participle, plus "by" for the doer.
- Keep the tense the same.
- Use passive when the doer is unknown, irrelevant or deliberately hidden.
Watch one worked through
Here is one done slowly, with the reason for every move. Then one for you.
Change this to the passive voice: "The gardener watered the plants."
- gardener (doer) → watered → plants (receiver)Find who is doing the action and what it is being done to. The gardener does it, the plants receive it.Passive voice swaps these two round, so you have to know which is which before you can move anything.
- The plants ...Move the receiver to the front: "The plants ..."The passive puts the thing acted on first. That is the whole point of it, to put attention on what happened rather than who did it.
- plants (plural, past) → were wateredChange the verb to a form of "to be" plus the past participle: "were watered".Use "were" because plants is plural and the sentence is in the past. Match the helper verb to the new subject, not the old one.
- The plants were watered by the gardener.Add the doer at the end with "by": "The plants were watered by the gardener."The by phrase is optional. Drop it when the doer is unknown or does not matter, which is why reports often use the passive.
Answer: The plants were watered by the gardener.
Change to the passive: "The teacher marked the papers." Write the full sentence.
Show the answer
The papers were marked by the teacher
Practise Active & Passive Voice
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