How to use Passive

Five Minute Guide to Passive

Forming sentences with Passive

• be + verb 3 (past participle)

1. The object from the active voice sentence moves to the subject position, and the verb be takes the same form as the main verb in the active voice sentence.
   • Active: My mother washes my clothes.
     Passive: My clothes are washed by my mother.
   • Active: My mother has washed my clothes.
     Passive: My clothes have been washed by my mother.
   • Active: My mother will wash my clothes.
     Passive: My clothes will be washed by my mother.
   • Active: My mother was washing my clothes.
     Passive: My clothes were being washed by my mother.
2. If there are two objects in the active sentence, two passive sentences are possible.
   • Active: They gave me 50 dollars to do it.
   • Passive: I was given 50 dollars to do it.
   • Passive: 50 dollars was given to me to do it.
3. We often use get instead of be in informal spoken English.
   • I got offered the promotion!
   • The table got damaged in the fire.
   • I got asked to present the award.
4. The subject of the active verb (sometimes called the agent) is not usually expressed in passive sentences, because it is unknown or unimportant. However, if it is used, it is usually preceded with “by”.
   • The painting was done by Picasso.
5. When we talk about a tool used by an agent, it can be preceded by with.
   • The painting was done with oils on canvas.

Using Passive

We use passive when the person or thing that causes the action is not important or is not known, or when we want to focus on the action.

• The rubbish is taken out every day. (We don’t know who takes the rubbish out, or maybe it’s not important.)
• The Great Wall of China was built thousands of years ago. (It’s not important exactly who built it, we want to focus on the action of building.)
• All my money has been stolen. (I don’t know who stole it, I want to emphasise the action of stealing.)
• My windows are cleaned once a month. (It’s not important who cleans them. The action of cleaning is more important.)

Passive in detail

What is passive voice?

To understand what we mean by passive voice, we first need to know what we mean by active voice. A clause in active voice is one where the subject is the person or thing doing the action. Here are some examples:

The baby	holds up	one foot.
The dog	chased	the cat.
subect	verb	direct oject

In these sentences, the subject (the baby; the dog) is doing the action (holding up; chasing)… and this is normally what subjects do: In a clause, subjects are normally the person or thing doing the action.

But there is another way we could say each of the clauses above. Let’s try rewriting one of them in a different way and see what happens:

• The cat was chased by the dog.

The sentence sounds perfectly okay written in this way. So what have we done? Well, have a look at what has happened to “the cat”:

• The dog chased the cat.
• The cat was chased by the dog.

In the first sentence, “the cat” is the direct object. (The direct object is the thing being acted upon.) In the second sentence though, we’ve moved “the cat” to the position of the subject. This sentence is in what we call passive voice. The subject of the verb in passive voice (the cat) is no longer the person or thing doing the action. Instead, it is being acted upon – it is now the recipient of the action.

There are a few reasons why we might want to say or write a sentence in passive voice rather than active voice, and we’ll come to these shortly. First, though, we’re going to look in more detail at what we have to do to change an active sentence to a passive one.

How do we form passive?

Here’s our original example again with the dog and the cat, first in active voice:

• The dog chased the cat.

In this active sentence, we have a subject (the dog) a past simple verb (chased) and a direct object (the cat). If we change this into a passive sentence we get this:

• The cat was chased by the dog.

Let’s break this sentence down and see what it gives us:

The cat	was	chased	by the dog.
subject	“be”	past participle

Here’s what we’ve done:

• Firstly, we’ve moved “the cat” to the subject position.
• Secondly, we’ve added the verb “be”. We add the verb “be” in a passive sentence in the same form as the main verb in the active sentence. In our active sentence the verb was in the past simple (chased). So, in our passive sentence we need to add “be” in the past simple as well (was).
• Next, we’ve added the past participle form of the main verb. (As “chase” is a regular verb, the past tense form that we saw in the active sentence and the past participle form are the same – “chased”).
• Finally, we can show who did the action (the original subject) at the end, using “by”. We can leave this part out though, and we’ll have a look at why we might want to do that later.

Here’s one way we can show clearly that “the cat” really is the new subject in the passive sentence. Let’s replace “the cat” with “him” in our original sentence and see what happens when we make it passive again:

• The dog chased him. (Active)
• He was chased by the dog. (Passive)

We’ve followed the same steps again and moved “him” to the subject position. But did you notice what happens when we move “him”? We’ve had to change it to the subject pronoun “he”. So this confirms for us that the original object in the active sentence becomes the subject in the passive sentence.

Let’s see how all this works with another example:

• The mayor will open the new community centre. (Active)
• The new community centre will be opened by the mayor. (Passive)

Breaking this down like we did before, here’s what we get:

The new community centre	will be	opened	by the mayor.
subject	“be”	past participle

Once again the direct object (the new community centre) has become the subject. Next, we have the verb “be” in the same form as the main verb in the active sentence. This time it’s a future form with “will”. After that, we have the past participle of the main verb, and finally we can show the original subject with “by” at the end.

Indirect objects

In the examples above we moved the direct object (the cat; the mayor) to the subject position. What happens though if we have an indirect object? Have a look at this active sentence:

• The woman gave the dog the food.

Here we have a direct object (the food) and an indirect object (the dog). Let’s try changing this to a passive sentence, following the same steps above, moving first the direct object and then the indirect object to the subject position:

The food	was	given	to the dog by the woman.
subject	“be”	past participle

The dog	was	given	the food by the woman.
subject	“be”	past participle

Both of these sound fine. It looks like we can move either a direct object or an indirect object to the subject position, following the same steps as above. The object which doesn’t get moved each time stays at the end of the sentence before we add “by the woman”.

Objects of the preposition

The third type of object that we might want to use for a passive sentence is the object of the preposition. Let’s see what happens with one of these:

• Goldilocks has slept in the bed.

In this active sentence, we have a prepositional phrase (in the bed) with the object of the preposition (the bed). Let’s try taking this object and making the sentence passive:

The bed	has been	slept	in	by Goldilocks.
subject	“be”	past participle

This seems to works too, and once again we’ve followed the same steps:

• Firstly we’ve moved the object to the subject position.
• We’ve then used the verb “be” in the same form as the main verb in the active sentence.
• Next comes the past participle of the main verb.

The one extra thing we find here is our preposition, left here when we moved its object! This preposition has become a dangling preposition. (A dangling or stranded preposition is one which doesn’t come immediately before its object.)

Using objects of the preposition in passive sentences doesn’t always work though. If the sentence also has a direct object then we can’t use it for the passive form. Have a look at this active sentence:

• Ugh! Someone put some sugar in my tea.

Here we have a direct object (some sugar) as well as an object of the preposition (my tea). We can make a passive sentence with the direct object without any problem, but if we try and use the object of the preposition, we end up with something that doesn’t look quite right:

• Ugh! Some sugar was put in my tea. (Passive – direct object)
• Ugh! My tea was put some sugar in. (Passive – object of the preposition)

Using “get” instead of “be”

Sometimes we can use “get” instead of “be” in passive sentences. We form the passive in exactly the same way when we do this, just substituting the same form of “get” as we would use with “be”. Here are a few examples:

• Someone stole my car yesterday (Active)
• My car was stolen yesterday. (Passive with “be”)
• My car got stolen yesterday. (Passive with “get”)

• Spain will thrash Brazil in the World Cup. (Active)
• Brazil will be thrashed by Spain in the World Cup. (Passive with “be”)
• Brazil will get thrashed by Spain in the World Cup. (Passive with “get”)

When do we use passive?

Now that we know how to form a passive sentence, let’s have a look at why we might want to speak or write in passive voice.

To leave out the person/thing doing the action

The first reason has to do with something we mentioned briefly when we looked at the form. We said with the first example (“The cat was chased by the dog”) that we could leave out “by the dog” If we wanted to. If we did this we would end up with:

• The cat was chased.

There are a few reasons why we might want to leave out “by the dog” (in other words leave out the person or thing who does the action):

• We might not know who chased the cat.
• It may be obvious from the context and so doesn’t need repeating.
• It may not be important, or “the cat” may be more important to emphasise.
• We might know, but not want to say.

All of these are good reasons to use passive instead of active voice – passive enables us to leave out the person or thing who does the action. With active voice we can’t do this. Here are some more examples:

• A new film about the Second World War will be released tomorrow.

In this example it’s not important to say who released the film – the fact of the film’s release is much more important.

• A lot of errors have been made in this report.

This time we might not want to say who made the errors – we don’t want to lay responsibility at one particular person’s door.

• My car was stolen yesterday.

In this case, we don’t know who stole the car, apart from the fact that it was “some thieves”. But it is obvious from the context that it was thieves so it doesn’t need to be stated.

To emphasise who or what does the action

Another reason to use passive voice is the opposite of the first. Sometimes we want to emphasise who or what did the action, and we can sometimes do this more easily by putting this person or thing at the end of the sentence. Compare these two sentences:

• His wife turned him in to the police. (Active)
• He was turned in to the police by his wife! (Passive)

Both of these sentences are absolutely fine. The first one just sounds like a statement of fact. With the second one though, we are adding some drama by really emphasising the fact that it was his wife who did it.

The person/thing doing the action is very long

Sometimes the original subject in an active sentence is so long that to keep the sentence in active voice sounds long-winded and clumsy. Have a look at this sentence:

• Three very clever mathematicians working together for the first time and using techniques previously only considered possible in theory made the discovery.

The action itself (making the discovery) has got a little lost at the end of the sentence in active voice. If we try the same sentence in passive voice it sounds less cumbersome and the action is not lost:

• The discovery was made by three very clever mathematicians working together for the first time and using techniques previously only considered possible in theory.

Related grammar points

Causative