Active and Passive Voice

Every English sentence with a transitive verb can be built in one of two ways. The choice is called voice, and it controls what sits at the front of the sentence — the doer or the thing the action lands on.

Both sentences describe the same event. What changes is the focus: the active version is about Sarah, the passive version is about the email.

Active voice

In the active voice, the subject performs the action. This is the default word order you've been using since your first English sentence: subject, verb, object.

The subject (the chef, Google, Maria) is the one doing the work. The object (the dish, engineers, landscapes) is what the action happens to. Nothing unusual — you already know this structure.

Passive voice

In the passive voice, the subject receives the action. What was the object of the active sentence now sits at the front, and the original doer either moves to the end with by or disappears entirely.

The verb itself also changes. Instead of a single form like prepares, the passive uses two parts: a form of be and the past participle of the main verb.

The formula

The passive is built on one pattern:

The form of be carries the tense and agreement. The past participle carries the meaning of the action.

In the present simple, be takes the form is or are depending on the subject. The past participle of a regular verb ends in -ed (solved, delivered, edited); irregular verbs have their own forms (written, taken, sent, built).

Other tenses follow the same pattern with a different form of be — was/were, has been, will be, and so on. How the passive looks in each tense is covered separately.

The subject-object flip

Turning an active sentence into a passive one follows three steps:

1. The object of the active sentence becomes the subject of the passive one.
2. The verb changes to be + past participle, keeping the same tense.
3. The original subject moves to the end with by, or is dropped.

The email — formerly the object — is now the grammatical subject. Sarah — formerly the subject — is now optional extra information at the end.

Why the passive exists

The passive isn't a fancier version of the active. It exists because sometimes the interesting thing in a sentence is what happened, not who did it.

In each case, the doer is either obvious, irrelevant, or too general to bother naming. The passive lets the sentence stay focused on what matters — the painting, the language, the bridge.

When to mention the agent

The original doer is called the agent, and it appears after by.

Include the agent when it adds real information:

Drop the agent when it's unknown, obvious, or unimportant:

Most passive sentences in real English drop the agent. The full set of reasons for using the passive — unknown doer, formal register, scientific writing — is covered separately.

Transitive verbs only

Only transitive verbs — verbs that take a direct object — can form a passive. A verb like write works because you write something; a verb like sleep or arrive does not, because there is no object to move to the front. The distinction between transitive and intransitive verbs is covered separately.

State, not action: be + past participle

Not every be + past participle combination is a true passive. Sometimes the same shape describes a state or result, not an action being performed.

This sentence is ambiguous. It can mean someone is closing the door right now (action — passive) or the door is in the closed position (state — description). Context usually makes it clear. The door is closed every evening at ten is clearly an action; the shop is closed on Sundays is clearly a state.

When be + past participle describes a lasting condition rather than an event, the participle is working more like an adjective than a verb.

Common mistakes

Missing the past participle

Missing the form of be

Using the infinitive instead of the past participle

Wrong form of be for the subject

Trying to make an intransitive verb passive

Keeping the active subject in place