Active vs Passive Voice and When to Use Each

Every sentence with an action verb can be written in two ways. In the active voice, the subject does the action. In the passive voice, the subject receives it. Neither is wrong, but they put the spotlight in different places.

How to recognise the passive

Look for two things together:

1. A form of be: am, is, are, was, were, be, being, been (and will be, has been, etc.).
2. A past participle, usually an -ed form, or an irregular one like written, taken, built.

The tiles were shuffled. The winner will be announced tomorrow. Mistakes have been made.

A handy test: if you can add by zombies after the verb and the sentence still makes grammatical sense, it's passive. The tiles were shuffled (by zombies) still works, so it's passive. The tiles fell off the table (by zombies) is nonsense, so it's active.

Note that be + -ing is not passive; it's the continuous aspect: She is writing a letter is active.

Turning active into passive

1. Take the object of the active sentence and make it the subject.
2. Put be in the same tense as the original verb and add the past participle.
3. Optionally add the original subject with by.

Only verbs that take an object (transitive verbs) can become passive. She laughed has no object, so there's no passive version.

When the active voice is better

The active voice is usually shorter and more direct, because it names who did what:

• Passive: A decision was made to cancel the tournament.
• Active: The organisers cancelled the tournament.

Long chains of passive sentences can hide responsibility. Mistakes were made is famous for exactly that reason.

When the passive voice is better

The passive is the right tool when:

• The doer is unknown: My wallet was stolen.
• The doer is obvious or unimportant: The suspect was arrested. (By the police, obviously.)
• The action or result matters more: Penicillin was discovered in 1928.
• You want to keep the same topic across sentences: The Q tile is the hardest letter to play. It is worth ten points and is usually played with a U.
• Scientific or technical writing focuses on the process: The samples were heated to 60°C.

Common mix-ups

• Was alone doesn't make a sentence passive. She was tired is a linking verb plus adjective.
• Passive is not the same as past. The rules are explained on page two is present-tense passive.
• Get can form an informal passive: He got promoted.

Practice quiz