The passive voice is often maligned by teachers and professors as a bad writing habit. Or, to put it in the active voice, teachers and professors across the English-speaking world malign the passive voice as a bad writing habit.

Catch passive voice in your writing

Grammarly can help you identify passive voice

Write with Grammarly

What is the passive voice?

In general, the active voice makes your writing stronger, more direct, and, you guessed it, more active. The subject something, or it the action of the verb in the sentence. With the passive voice, the subject is acted upon by some other performer of the verb. (In case you weren’t paying attention, the previous two sentences use the type of voice they describe.)

But the passive voice is not incorrect. In fact, there are times when it can come in handy. Read on to learn how to form the active and passive voices, when using the passive voice is a good idea, and how to avoid confusing it with similar forms.

The difference between active and passive voice

While is all about time references, describes whether the grammatical subject of a clause performs or receives the action of the verb.
Here’s the formula for the active voice:
[subject]+[verb (performed by the subject)]+[optional object]

Chester kicked the ball.

In a passive voice construction, the grammatical subject of the clause the action of the verb. So, the ball from the above sentence, which is the action, becomes the subject. The formula:
[subject]+[some form of the verb ]+[past participle of a transitive verb]+[optional prepositional phrase]

The ball was kicked by Chester.

That last little bit—“by Chester”—is a prepositional phrase that tells you who the performer of the action is. But even though Chester is the one doing the kicking, he’s no longer the grammatical subject. A passive voice construction can even drop him from the sentence entirely:

The ball was kicked.

How’s that for anticlimactic?

When (and when not) to use the passive voice

If you’re writing anything with a definitive subject who’s performing an action, you’ll be better off using the active voice. And if you search your document for instances of was, is, or were and your page lights up with instances of passive voice, it may be a good idea to switch to active voice.

That said, there are times when the passive voice does a better job of presenting an idea, especially in certain formal, professional, and legal discussions. Here are three common uses of the passive voice:

1
Reports of crimes or incidents with unknown perpetrators

My car was stolen yesterday.

If you knew who stole the car, it probably wouldn’t be as big a problem. The passive voice emphasizes the stolen item and the action of theft.

2
Scientific contexts

The rat was placed into a T-shaped maze.

Who places the rat into the maze? Scientists, duh. But that’s less important than the experiment they’re conducting. Therefore, passive voice.

3
When you want to emphasize an action itself and the doer of the action is irrelevant or distracting:

The president was sworn in on a cold January morning.

How many people can remember off the top of their heads who swears in presidents? Clearly the occasion of swearing in the commander in chief is the thing to emphasize here.
In each of the above contexts, the action itself—or the person or thing receiving the action—is the part that matters. That means the performer of the action can appear in a prepositional phrase or be absent from the sentence altogether.

Creative ways to use the passive voice in writing

The above examples show some formal uses of the passive voice, but some writers take advantage of the shift in emphasis it provides for other reasons. Here are moments when the passive voice is a stylistic decision that suits the author’s writing goals.
1
Avoid getting blamed
There are times when you want to get away with something without making it crystal-clear who’s at fault. The classic example:

“Mistakes were made.” —most politicians

Who made them? Is anyone taking responsibility? What’s the solution here? One political scientist dubbed this structure the “past exonerative” because it’s meant to exonerate a speaker from whatever foul they may have committed. In other words, drop the subject, get off the hook.

2
Beat around the bush

Jane Austen is a master of poking fun at her characters so euphemistically that it seems almost polite, and the passive voice is one of her favorite methods for doing that.

were carried to a point of perseverance beyond civility, they could not give offense.” —Jane Austen,

“[He] pressed them so cordially to dine at Barton Park every day till they were better settled at home that, though his entreatiesto a point of perseverance beyond civility, they could not give offense.” —Jane Austen,

Austen could have rephrased this sentence like so:

“Though Mr. Middleton carried his entreaties to a point of perseverance beyond civility, they could not give offense.”

Though maybe she means something closer to:

“Mr. Middleton pushed his invitations beyond the point of politeness and into pushiness, but he still meant well.”

In cases like this, the passive voice allows for more polite phrasing, even if it’s also a little less clear.

3
Make your reader pay more attention to the something

This is like the president getting sworn in: the thing that gets the action of the verb is more important than the people performing the action.

were evoked by historians as an emblem of the city drowned in memories.” —Gabriel García Márquez,

“That treasure lying in its bed of coral, and the corpse of the commander floating sideways on the bridge,as an emblem of the city drowned in memories.” —Gabriel García Márquez,

Here, you could invert the sentence to say “Historians evoked that treasure (and so on).” But that would take the focus away from that oh-so-intriguing treasure and the corpse. And since the historians are less important here, the author makes the choice to stress the key idea of the sentence through the passive voice.

Here’s another famous example that puts the emphasis on what happens to the subject, instead of on what the subject is doing:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” —The Declaration of Independence, 1776

“All men” (and these days, women, too) get boosted to the front of the phrase because their equality and rights are the focus. It makes sense that a statement declaring independence would focus on the people who get that independence, after all.

So writers use it. Can you?

The above examples lean toward the literary side of things, but don’t forget that there are times when the passive voice is useful and necessary in daily life. In each of the sentences below, the passive voice is natural and clear. Rewriting these sentences in the active voice renders them sterile, awkward, or syntactically contorted.
Passive: Bob Dylan was injured in a motorcycle accident.
Active: A motorcycle accident injured Bob Dylan.
Passive: Elvis is rumored to be alive.
Active: People rumor Elvis to be alive.
Passive: Don’t be fooled!
Active: Don’t allow anything to fool you!

Passive voice misuse

Sometimes what looks like passive voice isn’t passive voice at all. If you’re not careful, even the most careful eye can mistake the following sentences for passive voice.

Chester’s favorite activity is kicking.
The bank robbery took place just before closing time.
There is nothing we can do about it.
There were a great number of dead leaves covering the ground.

Despite what any well-meaning English teachers may have told you, none of the sentences above are written in the passive voice. The sentence about the leaves, in fact, was (wrongly) presented as an example of the passive voice by none other than Strunk and White in .
Here’s how to remember: using the verb doesn’t automatically put a verb phrase into the passive voice. You also need a past participle. That’s how to keep passive voice masqueraders from fooling you.

Use Grammarly to catch the passive voice

Grammarly catches instances of passive voice in your writing so you know when you need to switch it up. For example, when writing this, Grammarly pointed out that the first phrase was, in fact, written in passive voice. We ignored it, of course, for style reasons.

Want help finding passive voice?

Grammarly helps find and change passive voice

Write with Grammarly

The gist here:

• The passive voice isn’t a grammatical error; it’s a matter of style
• Use the active voice if it makes your sentence sound clearer and more natural
• Forming passive voice requires the verb “to be” a past participle
• The passive voice is your friend when the thing receiving an action is the important part of the sentence—especially in scientific and legal contexts, times when the performer of an action is unknown, or cases where the subject is distracting or irrelevant
• When it comes to good writing, don’t be passive—even if your sentences sometimes need to be
• Use Grammarly to help you find instances of passive voice
  

How to Form the Passive Voice in English

As you surely know already, all grammar topics are important and, in reality, they help you to learn languages better. The passive voice in English is a grammatical element that you cannot ignore because in many cases, you will use it to make your writing or speaking more formal.

Some people may have catalogued the passive voice as a bad habit, but in reality, it is not only correct but also very useful. Continue reading this article to learn how to form the passive tense and how to use it properly.

What Is the Passive Voice? 

First things first. To be able to correctly use this grammatical form, you must know your verb tenses very well and you must also learn the structure of the passive voice in English.

The passive informs us about who receives the action of the verb. We use the passive voice when we focus on the action and who is receiving it. The person who is performing the action is usually either unimportant or unknown. For example, we could say: 

As you can see in the sentence above, we do not know who performed the action.

Active vs. Passive Voice

Switching from active voice to passive voice is relatively easy. When using the passive voice in English, you need to keep in mind that the object of the “active” sentence becomes the subject of the “passive” sentence. At the same time, the subject of the “active” sentence becomes the object in the “passive” sentence, or is not mentioned. Here is an example:

(In this sentence, “someone” is the subject and “house” is the object.) 

(In this sentence, “house” has become the subject. As it is not relevant, “someone” disappears.)

You can add a prepositional phrase if you consider it necessary. Sometimes in the passive voice, it is still necessary to establish who is responsible for the action. Use a prepositional phrase to add this information, for example:

Passive Voice Examples

Let’s take a look at some examples of the passive voice in the different verb tenses. We have put the same sentence in active voice and passive voice so that you can see the changes that occur. Pay special attention to the use of the auxiliaries and in the passive voice.

Present Simple 

Active voice: 

Passive voice: 

Present Continuous 

Active voice:

Passive voice: 

Present Perfect 

Active voice: 

Passive voice:

Past Simple 

Active voice: 

Passive voice: 

Past Continuous 

Active voice: 

Passive voice: 

Future Simple

Active voice: 

Passive voice: 

Verb Tenses With No Passive Voice

Pay attention to these verb tenses. They cannot take the passive voice and must always remain active.

Present Perfect Continuous 

Active voice: 

Past Perfect Continuous 

Active voice: 

Future Continuous 

Active voice: 

Future Perfect Continuous 

Active voice: 

Sentences with intransitive verbs also cannot use the passive voice because they have no object. 

Passive Voice Exercises

“Practice makes perfect,” says the popular saying. So, if you want to master this grammar topic, here are some exercises that will allow you to practice the passive voice in English and become an expert.

One of the classic ways of learning the passive voice is to transform sentences from the active voice to the passive voice. It may seem a bit monotonous to you, but it will definitely help you master this so that you can do it with your eyes closed!

Another way of practising the passive voice in English it to take a story or a fairytale and read it out loud to practice your pronunciation, while also transforming the sentences from the active voice to the passive voice.

Now you have all the elements you need to master the passive voice in English. If you are interested in mastering English grammar, try the online course from ABA English. This course offers you 144 free video classes and the same number of short films that will help you learn the necessary grammar and language skills in an entertaining and effective way.