Peter Mangiaracina.

The Passive Voice explains how an active sentence changes when the receiver of an action becomes the grammatical subject. The passive uses an appropriate form of be followed by the main verb’s past participle. The original subject can appear as the agent in a phrase beginning with by, but the agent is often omitted.

The presentation compares active and passive sentence patterns, illustrates the change with Doctors use penicillin and Penicillin is used by doctors, and shows direct and indirect passive structures with verbs that take two objects. It also considers contexts in which the passive changes the emphasis of a sentence and introduces E-Prime as a form of English that avoids forms of be.

Important points

• The object of an active sentence can become the subject of a passive sentence.
• A passive verb phrase uses a form of be plus a past participle.
• The original subject can become an agent introduced by by.
• The agent can be omitted when it is unnecessary or the writer does not want to mention it.
• With some verbs that take two objects, either object can become the subject of a passive sentence.
• The passive can place more emphasis on the receiver of an action than on the person or thing performing it.

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