Passive Voice

active voice grammatical voice passive voice

Understanding the passive voice is important. The passive voice is used often by native English speakers. It's used both in formal and informal situations.

intermediate advanced

What Is Passive Voice?

The passive voice can be used to change the focus of your sentence.
To understand the passive voice, first, you need to know about the active voice.

Why Do We Use Passive Voice?

There are times when you do not want to mention the doer of the action.
Maybe you want to avoid the responsibility for identifying the doer, or maybe you do not know who or what did the action, or the object of the sentence is actually the most important part of your utterance.

Active Voice

Most English sentences are constructed using the structure 'subject + verb + object'. This structure creates a sentence in the active voice, where the subject performs the action on the object.

Sarah eats the pizza.

This is an active sentence, because the ''subject'' is clear at the beginning of the sentence.

Now imagine that you do not know who ate the pizza. In this case, you need to use the passive voice.

The pizza is eaten.

It is obvious that we do not know the doer of the action.

Passive Voice: Structure

Passive voice is constructed using the 'be verb + past participle' structure. To form a passive sentence, we need to use the passive tense.

To transform an active sentence into a passive one, follow these steps:

Identify the subject, the verb and the object of the active sentence.
Move the object to become the new subject of the sentence.
Check the verb tense in the active sentence.
Conjugate the verb 'be' to match the tense in the active sentence.
Add the past participle of the main verb after the verb 'be'.
Decide what to do with the subject of the active sentence.

Jim kicked the ball. → The ball was kicked.

Here we decided not to mention the subject at the end of the passive sentence.

Sarah ate the pizza. → The pizza was eaten.

Here in this example, the object of the active clause becomes the new subject of the passive sentence.

Passive Voice: Different Tenses

Passive Voice: Simple Tenses

Passive voice can be used with many tenses, such as simple tenses like present simple tense, past simple tense and future simple tense.
To change the tense of a passive sentence, all you need to do is change the form of the verb 'be'. The main verb in a passive sentence is always in the past participle form.

	Present simple	past simple	Future simple
Active	I make it.	I made it.	I will make it.
Passive	It is made.	It was made.	It will be made.
Negation	It is not made.	It was not made.	It will not be made.
Question	Is it made?	Was it made?	Will it be made?

Passive Voice: Continuous Tenses

To change the tense of a passive sentence in the continuous tense, you need to conjugate the verb 'be' in the continuous tense. The main verb in a passive sentence is always in the past participle form.

is/are → is/are being
was/were → was/were being

	Present continuous	Past continuous	Future continuous
Active	I am making it.	I was making it.	I will be making it.
Passive	It is being made.	It was being made.	It will be being made.
Negation	It is not being made.	It was not being made.	It will not be being made.
Question	Is it being made?	Was it being made?	Will it be being made?

Active and Passive Example

Passive Voice: Perfect Tenses

To change the tense of a passive sentence in the perfect tense, you need to conjugate the verb 'be' in the perfect tense.
have → have been
has → has been

	Present perfect	Past perfect	Future perfect
Active	I have made it.	I had made it.	I will have made it.
Passive	It has been made.	It had been made.	It will have been made.
Negation	It has not been made.	It had not been made.	It will not have been made.
Question	Has it been made?	Had it been made?	Will it have been made?

Passive Voice: Perfect Continuous Tenses

To change the tense of a passive sentence in the perfect tense, you need to conjugate the verb 'be' in the perfect continuous tense.
have been → have been being
has been → has been being
Note that it is not common to make passive sentences in the present continuous tenses. So try to keep the sentences in these tenses active.

	Present perfect continuous	Past perfect continuous	Future perfect continuous
Active	I have been making it.	I had been making it.	I will have been making it.
Passive	It has been being made.	It had been being made.	It will have been being made.
Negation	It has not been being made.	It had not been being made.	It will not have been being made.
Question	Has it been being made?	Had it been being made?	Will it have been being made?

the Preposition 'by'

In a passive sentence, we need to decide what to do with the subject. In the passive voice, it is not necessary to mention who or what performed the action. However, we can include the subject of the active sentence in the passive sentence using the preposition 'by'.

Jim kicked the ball. → The ball was kicked by Jim.

Here, the subject of the active sentence is mentioned at the end of the passive clause.

Sarah ate the pizza. → The pizza was eaten by Sarah.

Passive Voice: Uses

Now let's see where we can use the passive voice.

When we do not know who or what is the subject.

Somebody stole my car. → My car was stolen.

When it is not important who or what did the action.

Somebody called an ambulance. → An ambulance was called.

When it is obvious who or what is the doer of the action.

The waiter brought the menu. → The menu was brought.

In newspaper articles and titles, for example in crime reports.

Somebody murdered a man. → A man was murdered.

In scientific texts.

Carbon dioxide is produced during the processes of decay of organic materials.

Not All Active Sentences Can Be Transformed into Passive Ones

Remember that not all verbs in English take an object. So, some sentences can be complete without an object. Therefore, you cannot convert every active sentence into a passive one.

Transitive And Intransitive Verbs

Verbs that need an object are called transitive, while verbs that do not need an object are intransitive.

John sneezed in the classroom.

As it is obvious in the example 'sneeze' is an intransitive verb that does not require an object at all.

The water flows.

I live in America.

Tip!

The auxiliary verb 'do' and its other forms 'does' and 'did' do not appear in the passive sentences.

Passive Voice with 'Get'

We can use to get as an alternative for 'to be' auxiliary verb in passive voice but only in informal speech and not in formal cases. The structure is the same as the structure with 'to be' verbs. The emphasis in this formation is mostly on the subject and it is mostly used with active verbs, not stative verbs. Check out the examples:

I got rubbed when I was at the mall.

The store got damaged by the costumers on Black Friday.

'Get' is an action verb, therefore it is used with physical or mental action verbs such as 'break, eat, choose and marry.' So, the get-passive is used with action verbs. But, the be-passive can be used with action and state verbs.

What you went through cannot be imagined. (Not 'cannot ~~get~~ imagined.')

The get-passive is commonly used in speaking of negative or undesirable events.

Our car got stolen last night.

I got fired!

Sometimes a reflexive pronoun is used with the get-passive. This indicates that the subject was partly responsible for the event or made it happen.

He got himself stuck in that mess!

Review

Passive:
Whenever the subject of the sentence is not important or you don’t know the doer of the action; you use passive voice. It means the emphasis is on the object of the sentence.

Structure:
Object (as the new subject of) + to be (it follows the number and person of the active sentence) +past participle of the verb +complements (if is existed).

Tip

Some verbs are intransitive, so we cannot make a passives sentence with them.

You can always bring the subject in the passive sentence whenever you want, just note that it must be put after the term (by) at the end of the sentence.