The passive voice
The short answer
The passive is a form of be plus a past participle: the report was written. It moves the object of the sentence into the subject position, which is what you want when the doer is unknown, obvious, or beside the point. Name the doer with by, or leave them out entirely.
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The rule
The passive voice turns the object of an active sentence into its subject. It is formed with the appropriate tense of be plus the past participle, so the tense is carried by be and the main verb never changes. Only verbs that take an object can be made passive. English uses the passive to keep the focus on what happened rather than on who did it, which is useful when the doer is unknown, irrelevant, or being deliberately left unnamed, and the by phrase adds them back when they matter.
| Form | Structure | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Present simple | am / is / areparticiple | The office is cleaned daily. |
| Past simple | was / wereparticiple | The report was written in May. |
| Present perfect | has / have beenparticiple | The form has been sent. |
| Future | will beparticiple | You will be contacted shortly. |
| Modal | modalbeparticiple | It must be signed by Friday. |
| Continuous | is / was beingparticiple | The road is being resurfaced. |
Part 1 of 3
Why the passive exists
Three situations call for it. The doer is unknown: my bike was stolen. The doer is obvious or irrelevant: the results will be published next week. Or the thing acted on is what the sentence is really about, and putting it first keeps the paragraph flowing.
A fourth use is worth naming honestly: the passive lets a writer omit the responsible party. Mistakes were made is a complete sentence with nobody in it. That is a legitimate stylistic tool and also the reason the passive has a bad reputation.
The window was broken during the night.
Nobody knows by whom.
Your application has been received.
The receiver is obvious, the company.
The bridge was designed by Brunel.
The doer matters, so by names them.
NBRoughly one passive sentence in five includes a by phrase; the rest leave the doer out.
Part 2 of 3
Forming it in every tense
Only be changes. Whatever tense the active sentence was in, put be into that tense and add the past participle: writes → is written, wrote → was written, has written → has been written, will write → will be written.
Two forms are avoided in practice. The perfect continuous passive: has been being written: is grammatically possible and nobody uses it. The future continuous passive is the same. If you find yourself building one, rewrite the sentence in the active.
The samples are being tested now.
Present continuous passive.
The decision had already been made.
Past perfect passive.
This can be done online.
Modal passive, modal, be, participle.
Part 3 of 3
Two objects, and verbs that resist
Verbs with two objects can passivise either one, and English strongly prefers the person: they gave me a form becomes I was given a form far more naturally than a form was given to me.
Intransitive verbs have no object and so have no passive at all: arrive, happen, sleep, occur. An accident was happened is not a clumsy sentence but an impossible one, and it is a frequent error among learners whose own language passivises more freely.
She was offered the job on Monday.
Person as subject, the natural choice.
We were told to wait outside.
Tell in the passive, with an instruction.
The accident happened at six.
Active only, happen has no object.
Mistakes to avoid
What learners actually get wrong
The accident was happened at six.
The accident happened at six.
Happen has no object, so it cannot be passive. The same applies to arrive, occur, appear, die and sleep, a passive needs something to have been acted on.
The report was wrote by the team.
The report was written by the team.
The passive takes the past participle, not the past simple. Irregular verbs with three distinct forms, write, wrote, written, are where this shows up, and it is invisible in regular verbs, which is why it survives.
The letter was sent from me.
The letter was sent by me.
By names the doer; from names an origin. From is a common substitution for speakers of languages that use a preposition meaning from in this slot.
It was decided by the committee that the proposal was to be rejected by them.
The committee rejected the proposal.
Grammatically correct and much worse than the active. When the doer is known and the sentence is about what they did, the passive adds words and removes clarity. This is the case the style advice is actually about.
Now use it
Passive voice
Rewrite active sentences in the passive, keeping the tense. Reading a rule and being able to apply it are different skills, and only one of them shows up when you speak.
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Questions
Asked and answered
- Is the passive bad style?
- No, and the blanket advice against it is wrong. It is the right choice when the doer is unknown, obvious or irrelevant, which is why scientific and legal writing use it heavily. It becomes bad style only when it hides a doer the reader needs, or when it turns a two-word action into a six-word construction.
- How often does by appear?
- Much less often than textbook exercises suggest, most real passives name no doer at all. Exercises lean on the by phrase because it makes the transformation checkable, which gives learners a distorted picture of how the passive is actually used.
- What is the get passive?
- Get replaces be in informal speech: he got fired, my phone got stolen. It suggests something sudden or unwelcome and is common in conversation, rare in formal writing, and generally not what an exam wants unless it is testing register.