Passive Voice

English verbs have two voices, active and passive. Active verbs occur when the subject of the sentence performs the action of the sentence. The person or object performing an action is called the agent. Passive voice occurs when the subject is the recipient of the action. Example:

• Passive: Smith was bitten by a lion. Active: A lion bit Smith.
• Passive: The baby was scared by me. Active: I scared the baby.
• Passive: John was eaten by a monster. Active: A monster ate John.

Smith, baby and John is the recipients. The lion, me (I) and monster act as the agent. To form a passive sentence, the rule can be described below

Subject + finite form of to be + Past Participle

Sometimes, Passive voice is used when the focus is on the action. However, it is not important or not known who or what is performing the action. Example:

• My car was stolen.
• Smith was killed.
• A kid was kidnapped.

An active sentence can have more than one passive forms. Example:

Active: Smith bought a cola for me

Passive: A cola was bought for me by Smith

Passive: I was bought a cola by Smith

Passive sentence that is formed by transitive verbs, will be called Personal passive. When intransitive verbs is used, otherwise, the passive sentence will be called Impersonal passive. For example:

• It is said that UFO is real. (impersonal)
• A car was crashed by a truck (personal)

When rewriting active sentences in passive voice, note the following:

1. the object of the active sentence becomes the subject of the passive sentence
2. the finite form of the verb is changed (to be + past participle)
3. the subject of the active sentence becomes the object of the passive sentence (or is dropped)

Source: [utexas] [ego4u]