Passive Voice

What is Passive Voice?

In English, sentences are usually Active. This means the Subject does the action.

In the Passive Voice, the Subject receives the action. We focus on what happened, not who did it.

Active: Shakespeare wrote Hamlet.
Passive: Hamlet was written by Shakespeare.

Structure

To form the passive voice, we use the verb to be + Past Participle.

Subject + TO BE + Past Participle (+ by Agent)

The verb "to be" changes depending on the tense of the sentence. The main verb is always in the Past Participle form (e.g., eaten, written, cleaned).

Tense Changes

Here is how the structure changes for different tenses:

Tense	Active Sentence	Passive Sentence
Present Simple	I clean the room.	The room is cleaned.
Present Continuous	I am cleaning the room.	The room is being cleaned.
Past Simple	I cleaned the room.	The room was cleaned.
Past Continuous	I was cleaning the room.	The room was being cleaned.
Present Perfect	I have cleaned the room.	The room has been cleaned.
Past Perfect	I had cleaned the room.	The room had been cleaned.
Future (Will)	I will clean the room.	The room will be cleaned.
Future (Going to)	I am going to clean the room.	The room is going to be cleaned.
Future Perfect	I will have cleaned the room.	The room will have been cleaned.
Modals (Can/Must)	I must clean the room.	The room must be cleaned.

When to use the Passive Voice?

We do not use the passive voice all the time. It is used in specific situations:

• We don't know who did the action:
  My wallet was stolen. (I don't know who stole it.)
• The action is more important than the person:
  The new bridge was built in 2023. (Who built it is not important.)
• For scientific or formal writing:
  The chemical is placed in a test tube.

Note: We can use "by" if we want to say who did the action.
"Harry Potter" was written by J.K. Rowling.

Passive with Reporting Verbs

Verbs like say, think, believe, know, report, expect are often used in the passive voice to express general opinions or rumors. There are two common structures:

Structure 1:
It + passive verb + that + clause

Structure 2:
Subject + passive verb + to + infinitive

Here are examples showing how to change an Active sentence (general opinion) into these two Passive forms:

Active: People say that he is rich.
Structure 1: It is said that he is rich.
Structure 2: He is said to be rich.

Active: They believe that the company is in trouble.
Structure 1: It is believed that the company is in trouble.
Structure 2: The company is believed to be in trouble.

Active: We know that she works hard.
Structure 1: It is known that she works hard.
Structure 2: She is known to work hard.

Active: People expect that the price will rise.
Structure 1: It is expected that the price will rise.
Structure 2: The price is expected to rise.