Active and Passive
Lessons (1k): The passive voice
There are two "voices" in English grammar. There's the active voice, and the passive voice.
Normally we use the active voice. It's the usual way to speak.
We mainly use the passive voice in writing, especially in business or academic writing.
"The passive voice is used more often in formal written English."
When do we use the passive?
We all know the grammar of the passive, but when do we use the passive? It sounds strange to say “the mouse was chased by the cat”. I might write those words if I want to explain something very carefully, perhaps in an academic document or a business letter. I certainly wouldn’t say them in ordinary conversation.
In fact, we don’t often use the passive when we talk. It's not natural. One way to decide if somebody is telling the truth is to look at their use of the active and passive. If they suddenly start using the passive, it may mean they’re lying. If a person says, "I deny that!" it's natural. If he says "That is denied." it's very unnatural.
OK, here’s another example of active and passive:
We can all see the grammatical difference between these two, but what’s the difference in function? One of these sentences tells you something that the other one doesn’t. Yes, that’s right, the passive sentence doesn’t tell you who saw the elephant.
When we use a verb, normally we say who did it. For example, "John bought a coffee." This is the active voice. When we read the sentence, we know who did it; John did it. John was the "agent".
We use the passive voice when:
- We don't know who did it, or
- We're not interested in who did it, or
- We don't want to say who did it.
Don’t use the passive too much. George Orwell wrote 1984 and Animal Farm. He said “never use the passive where you can use the active”. A lot of people agree with him, and so does Microsoft Word. The passive is a very important part of writing English for Academic Purposes, so you will use it a lot if you go to university in Britain or the USA. We also see the passive a lot in business letters, and in newspapers where about 13% of verbs are in the passive.
How do we make the passive?
| Example sentence | TENSE |
|---|---|
| The oceans are explored every day. | PRESENT SIMPLE |
| The oceans were partly explored last century. | PAST SIMPLE |
| The oceans are still being explored today. | PRESENT CONTINUOUS |
| The oceans were being explored when Charles Darwin wrote On The Origin of Species | PAST CONTINUOUS |
| The oceans have been explored in many ways. | PRESENT PERFECT |
| The oceans are going to be explored this century. | FUTURE SIMPLE (1) |
| The oceans will be explored this century. | FUTURE SIMPLE (2) |
| We can often make the passive using "get" plus the past participle. It's less common and often less formal: | |
| Simon and Sarah got engaged last week. | PAST SIMPLE |
| They are going to get married next week. | FUTURE SIMPLE (1) |
| They will get married next week. | FUTURE SIMPLE (2) |
| They are getting married next week. | PRESENT CONTINUOUS FOR FUTURE |
We do use “get” + past participle about getting engaged and getting married, but we usually use it about bad things that happen to us. For example, our car may get hit by another car, or we may:
• lose our house keys and get locked out
• get caught doing something wrong
• get arrested by the police
• get put in prison
• get wet because it’s raining
• get a broken arm
• get robbed by a criminal
Remember, this is usually for bad things. We say “Tom got fired” but “David’s been promoted.”
Passive voice when we don't know who did it
You go to lunch. You leave your iPhone on your desk. When you come back, the iPhone is not there. You don't know who took it. You think it was probably a criminal, so the verb is "to steal".
You can use the active voice:
"Somebody has stolen my iPhone."
"My iPhone has been stolen."
It sounds natural to use the passive voice this time.
Some more examples:
Make a passive verb into an active verb:
How could we make these sentences into the active voice for normal, natural speaking? We need an agent; we need to say who did it. But we don’t know who did it. There are two ways to do this:
First, we can guess who did it:
Second, we can use a non-specific word. We can use a personal pronoun ("we" or “you” or “"they") or an indefinite pronoun ("everybody” or "nobody"):
Traditional English grammar books weren't very friendly. A grammar lesson on the Internet is quite friendly, so I use the active voice in my grammar lessons. When I need an agent, I use the word "we". For example:
Can I use "one" as an agent?
No, not really. A traditional English grammar book uses the passive voice a lot. If it uses a non-specific word for an agent, it won't be "we", "you", "they" or "everybody"; it'll be "one". "One does this", "One doesn't do that."
However, in modern English we don't often use "one" like this. You may see it in an older cookery book ("One takes two eggs...") or in older literature ("If one is a gentleman, there are some things one just doesn't do").
This is where you will see the word "one" in modern English:
Try not to use "one" as an agent when you want to turn a passive verb into an active one.
Passive voice when we're not interested in who did it
Sometimes we don't say who did it because we don't care, and sometimes because it's obvious.
We don't care who:
These are all formal statements of fact. If you're being formal, it sounds right to use the passive in writing and speaking.
Sometimes we're not interested in who did it because it's obvious. That could be because everybody did it, or because it's always the same people who do it:
Everybody?
This is how we write formal statements of fact. If we’re talking to a friend, we probably use the active, even though we have to add an agent: “You can sometimes see the aurora borealis in Scotland.” “Everybody in Switzerland saw the solar eclipse.” Maybe the person you're talking to has never been to Scotland; and obviously not everybody in Switzerland saw the eclipse (some were babies, some were asleep). These are just ways to add an agent, so that we can use the active voice for normal speaking.
Always the same people?
We normally use the verbs "arrest", "bear", "marry" and "promote" in the passive voice. That's because it's always the police who arrest criminals; it's always the mother that bears a child; it's always a priest (or a vicar or a registrar) who marries a couple; and it's always the employer who promotes an employee. We don't need to say every time that the agent was the police, the mother, the priest or the employer.
For example:
Sometimes we use the passive with an agent. Let's look at "arrest" again:
| Voice / agent | Example | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| Passive voice without agent | “The criminal was arrested the next day.” | It was the police who arrested the criminal, obviously. |
| Passive voice with agent | “The criminal was arrested the next day, by the British Transport police.” | It's normal to use the verb "to arrest" in the passive voice, but this time we're interested in the agent, because it was not the usual police. It's a surprise that the British Transport police did it. |
| Active voice | “The British Transport police arrested the criminal the next day.” | We normally use the passive voice with "to arrest". Why use the active voice this time? Probably because the speaker already talked about the normal police and the British Transport police. He's more interested in the police than he is in the criminal. |
Now let's think about "blow". Like "arrest" and "promote", this verb is usually in the passive, because it's almost always the wind that blows things around (litter, pieces of paper), or blows things over:
| Voice / agent | Example | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| Passive voice without agent | “My bicycle was blown over last night.” | It was the wind that blew over the bicycle, obviously. |
| Passive voice with agent | “My bicycle was blown over by the strong wind last night.” | The speaker thinks the other person doesn't know there was a strong wind last night. |
| Active voice | “The strong wind last night blew my bicycle over.” | We normally use the passive voice with "to blow". Why use the active voice this time? Probably because the speaker already talked about strong winds. He's more interested in the wind than he is in the bicycle. |
We're also not interested in 'who did it' when we do academic and scientific writing:
Active voice for normal English: "We use the passive voice more often in academic writing."
Passive voice for academic English: "The passive voice is used more often in academic writing."
If you do some scientific research and then write to your mother about it, you use the active voice. "We took a sample and tested it with a Geiger counter." It's normal English, and there's no reason to use the passive, so you use the active voice. However, if you write a formal scientific article about it, normally you don't say who did it. You say, "A sample was taken and tested with a Geiger counter." Click here to read more about the passive voice in academic English.
It's normal to use the passive when you're writing scientific articles, or even serious newspaper articles with facts about science, history, law, geography and natural events, Because it's normal, people often use tthe passive in formal writing even when they do want to say who did it. Each of these examples is the passive with an agent:
Passive voice when we don't want to say who did it
People often don't want to say who did something bad - especially if they did it!
Do the active and the passive always mean the same thing?
Almost always, the answer is "yes", but sometimes the meaning changes. Think about these examples:
ACTIVE: “In ordinary conversation we don’t often use the passive.”
PASSIVE: “In ordinary conversation, the passive is not often used.”
Do these mean the same?
ACTIVE: “I don’t know the speed of sound”
PASSIVE: “The speed of sound is not known”.
Do these mean the same?
Exercise: Complete this table
Technical grammar points:
Subject and object in active and passive sentences
Active: “The cat chased the mouse.”
Passive: “The mouse was chased by the cat.”
In the active sentence, the subject is the cat, and the object is the mouse.
In the passive sentence, the subject is the mouse.
Not all verbs can be used in the passive
The rule is that you can’t use an intransitive verb in the passive. When you think about it, this is obvious.
A complete sentence in English usually needs subject, verb and object. That’s because most English verbs are transitive. A transitive verb is one that needs a direct object. For example to lift, to hold, to use. These are incomplete sentences: “Sarah lifted.” “Simon was holding”. “Caroline uses”. What did Sarah lift? What was Simon holding? What does Caroline use? We must give the verb an object: “Sarah lifted the baby, Simon was holding a book, Caroline uses a computer”.
You can use a transitive verb in the active or the passive. Caroline can use a computer (active), or the computer can be used (passive).
An intransitive verb does not have a direct object. For example, to laugh, to read, to arrive, to bark, to swim, to sing. These sentences have intransitive verbs so they are complete without a direct object: “Sarah laughed.” “The dog barked.” “Simon was reading.” “I was singing.”
This is why we can’t use an intransitive verb in the passive voice:
At this point, a student often says “But Sarah can laugh at Simon, and Simon can be laughed at by Sarah”. Yes, that’s true, but the verb to laugh is intransitive, and the phrasal verb to laugh at is transitive. Here are some more examples of verbs which become transitive when they become phrasal verbs: to bark at, to read about, to object to, to look into, to talk about, to talk to, to run over.
*Both of these passive sentences sound a little unnatural. Remember, the passive voice is usually for writing, not for speaking; and Orwell tells us to use the active, unless there’s a good reason not to.