The impersonal passive is a formal construction used to report opinions, beliefs, and rumors without naming who holds them. It is the standard voice of news reporting, academic writing, and official statements — any context where the source of the claim is unknown, irrelevant, or deliberately left unspecified.
No one is identified as the speaker. The statement presents a widely held view as a kind of public fact.
The two patterns
The same idea can be expressed in two parallel structures. Both use a reporting verb (say, believe, think, know, understand, report, consider, expect, claim, allege, rumor) in the passive, but they attach it differently.
Pattern 1 — impersonal. The sentence starts with the empty subject it, and the reported content follows as a full that-clause.
Pattern 2 — personal. The real subject of the reported clause moves to the front of the main sentence, and the rest becomes an infinitive.
The two patterns mean the same thing. Pattern 1 feels slightly more neutral and journalistic; Pattern 2 feels tighter and sounds more natural when you want the subject up front.
Side-by-side transformation
| IMPERSONAL (PATTERN 1) | PERSONAL (PATTERN 2) |
|---|---|
| It is said that she speaks six languages. | She is said to speak six languages. |
| It is thought that the building is unsafe. | The building is thought to be unsafe. |
| It is known that the company is in trouble. | The company is known to be in trouble. |
| It was expected that the talks would fail. | The talks were expected to fail. |
Notice the mechanical shift: the subject of the that-clause becomes the subject of the main verb, and the finite verb of the that-clause becomes a bare infinitive with to.
Common reporting verbs
These are the verbs you will most often see in this structure:
- say, believe, think, know, understand
- report, claim, allege, rumor
- consider, expect, assume, suppose
Perfect infinitive for earlier time
When the reported action happened before the moment of reporting, the personal pattern uses the perfect infinitive (to have + past participle).
The belief or report is happening now; the event itself is in the past. The impersonal version handles this naturally with ordinary tense:
| PERSONAL (PERFECT INFINITIVE) | IMPERSONAL (PAST IN *THAT*-CLAUSE) |
|---|---|
| He is said to have escaped. | It is said that he escaped. |
| The treaty is believed to have failed. | It is believed that the treaty failed. |
| She is known to have lived in Paris. | It is known that she lived in Paris. |
Use the simple infinitive (to be, to live, to work) when the reported state overlaps with the moment of reporting. Use the perfect infinitive (to have been, to have lived, to have worked) when it is earlier.
Moving the reporting verb in time
The main passive verb can shift between tenses to place the reporting itself in the past, present, or recent past.
The same flexibility works for Pattern 2:
In practice, the present form (is said, is believed, is thought) is by far the most common.
Register
This construction belongs to formal English. It is the default for news headlines, court reports, scientific summaries, biographies, and official communiqués. In casual conversation, people usually prefer active forms with a vague subject — they say, people think, everyone knows — rather than the impersonal passive.
Both are correct; the choice depends on context.
Common mistakes
Mixing the two patterns
Forgetting "to" in the personal form
Wrong infinitive for earlier time
Wrong tense of the reporting verb
Using an active reporting verb where the passive is required