In English, the passive voice is a way to form a sentence so that the subject undergoes or receives the action of the verb. This makes passive sentences different from regular active voice sentences where the subject does the action and the object undergoes the action:
Active Voice
Sarah threw the ball.
Passive Voice
The ball was thrown.
To form the passive voice:
Move the object of a verb into the subject position.
Use be + the past participle of the main verb.
Sounds a little confusing? No worries — forming and using the passive voice is much, much easier than it seems. In this post you’ll learn all about passive voice, including how to form a passive sentence, when to use the passive voice, how to use the passive voice in different tenses, and how to form negative sentences with the passive. Read on and get ready to dive into all the details about the passive voice!
The passive voice is formed by using to be + the past participle of the main verb. The form of to be should agree with the subject.
subject
(undergoes the action)
to be
past participle
(of the main verb)
That car is parked badly.
The dishes were washed.
My puppy is not trained yet.
In a passive sentence, the subject undergoes an action someone or something else does. That means that the verb needs to represent an action that can be done to someone or something.
So, if the verb can’t take an object in an active sentence, you can’t make it a passive verb!
In spoken English, it’s very common to form the passive voice with get instead of be:
get
past participle
(of the main verb)
The car got stolen!
They had to stop the race because an athlete got hurt.
Passives formed with get sound faster, more abrupt, more accidental, and less formal. However, there is no literal difference in meaning between a passive with get and with be.
Though get passives are used like passive verbs, you can actually use get in a lot of similar expressions. Have a look at this discussion of expressions with get to learn more!
To conjugate a passive verb, you can just change the form of be or get into whatever tense you want to create. The past participle does not change. For example:
The mouse was caught.
The mouse was being caught.
The mouse had been caught.
The mouse is caught.
The mouse is being caught.
The mouse has been caught.
The mouse will be caught.
The mouse will have been caught.
...
Her car got stolen.
Her car was getting stolen.
Her car had gotten stolen.
Her car gets stolen.
Her car is getting stolen.
Her car has gotten stolen.
Her car will get stolen.
Her car will have gotten stolen.
...
Do you see the verb be is sometimes used twice? We often use passive verbs in the continuous tenses: tenses which follow the pattern be + verb-ing. When this happens we use the verb be twice in one word:
Maria’s dog is being groomed this afternoon.
You can negate a passive verb just like you negate any other verb in English: use the word not after the first auxiliary verb.
In a passive with be, the verb be is an auxiliary verb:
The mouse was caught. → The mouse was not caught.
The mouse had been caught. → The mouse had not been caught.
The mouse will have been caught. → The mouse will not have been caught.
The verb get in a passive with get is not an auxiliary verb:
Her car got stolen. → Her car did not get stolen.
Her car was getting stolen. → Her car was not getting stolen.
Her car will get stolen. → Her car will not get stolen.
Sometimes passive voice clauses are followed with a by phrase (by + noun) to show who the agent is. The agent is the noun that performs the action. For example:
The dishes were washed by Olivia.
The bed was made by my mother.
The gifts were given by her parents.
The criminals got caught by the police.
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The dishes were washed by her.
That puzzle was completed by me.
The book was written by him.
Notice that a by phrase usually comes after the verb.
We use passive sentences in cases where the agent is not the focus of the sentence. Notice the difference between the two sentences below:
I threw the ball.
The ball was thrown (by me).
There are five main situations where it is common to use the passive voice in English:
when the agent is unknown
when the agent is not important
when the object is the topic of discussion
in academic writing
for accepted ideas and truths
Let’s look at each use!
When the agent of an action is completely unknown, you can use the passive voice to describe what happened. For example:
The window was broken.
My car was stolen.
The house was cleaned before we arrived.
Technically, you can state an unknown agent by adding the phrase by someone to the end of the sentence:
The window was broken by someone.
However, this phrasing tends to sound really awkward and unnecessary, so most native speakers will just drop an unknown agent from a passive sentence.
You can use a passive verb if the agent is not important or if you do not want to focus attention on the agent. This might be because:
The person you’re talking to doesn’t benefit from knowing who the agent is:
The house was cleaned.
The agent can be understood from the context:
Since the new government took over, funding for schools has been increased.
You want to direct attention away from the person who made a mistake or did something wrong.
The report was sent late.
This is sometimes used in the news to protect someone from criticism or to protect the newspaper from making false accusations:
$10 million dollars were stolen from public funds.
We often use the passive voice because the object is the topic of a conversation. The agent may add important information, but what we are really talking about is the object of the action, so we want that object to be the subject of the sentence. For example:
The houses on this hill are all beautiful and very expensive. That house was actually designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, so it is especially interesting.
The Grand Canyon is visited by 5 million people every year and it is a major tourist attraction in Arizona.
In each of these sentences, we know exactly who the agent is, but we want to show the importance of the object instead of the agent.
The passive voice is very common in academic writing, especially research. We use the passive to keep the focus on the facts and actions and away from the people who discovered them. Compare:
The participants of the study were given a survey on the first day.
I gave the participants of the study a survey.
Academic writing tends to avoid using first person pronouns, for the same reason!
In some styles of writing, you will see a lot of active voice. In others you will see more passive voice.
Most writing teachers will tell students to avoid using the passive voice where you can, since the active voice is more direct, easier to understand, and makes you sound stronger. But there are cases where the passive voice is better too. Lots of practice is the key!
Sometimes people make broad statements about accepted ideas and truths. In these situations, the agent doesn’t matter because the agent is everyone! So you can use the passive voice to make these broad, widely accepted statements:
Casablanca is considered one of the best movies of all time.
Paris is thought to be the most romantic city in the world.
The passive voice is often used in formal writing.
We also sometimes use the passive voice in this way to give an opinion, but state it in a way that sounds like a fact.
To learn more about making statements like these, check out our post on it is sentences in English!
In this post, we learned quite a lot about the passive voice! Let’s do a quick summary just to remember everything we talked about:
In the passive voice, the subject is the receiver of the action (or the object of the verb).
The passive voice is formed like this: subject + to be + past participle.
We can use the passive voice in any tense.
We can use the passive voice in several situations:
The agent is unknown
Emphasizing the object
Emphasizing the action
Omitting the agent
Appearing objective
Discussing accepted social norms
Now, are you ready to practice? Have a look at our English passive voice activities to test your understanding!
