The passive voice is a choice, not a default. You use it when the focus of the sentence should sit on the receiver of the action, not on the person or thing doing it. Active is the standard; passive is what you reach for when active would put the wrong word in the spotlight.
Five situations make the passive the better choice.
Reason 1: The agent is unknown
When you have no idea who did something, the passive lets you describe what happened without inventing a subject.
Active versions would force a vague somebody or they into the subject slot, which adds noise without adding meaning.
Reason 2: The agent is obvious or unimportant
If the doer is predictable from context, naming them is a waste of words.
The same applies to routine procedures where the agent is generic. The form must be signed in black ink does not improve if you add by the applicant.
Reason 3: Focus shifts to the receiver
Sometimes the thing acted upon is genuinely more interesting than the actor. The passive puts it first, where the reader's attention naturally lands.
Compare Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa — grammatically fine, but it makes the painting feel secondary to the painter. If your topic is the painting, passive fits better.
Reason 4: Objectivity and formal register
News reports, scientific writing, and official notices use the passive to keep the tone impersonal. The focus stays on events and procedures rather than on individuals.
This is not about hiding anyone — it is about signalling that the process matters more than the person running it. In a lab report, I heated the sample feels personal where the sample was heated feels procedural.
Reason 5: Keeping the same subject across clauses
When two things happen to the same person or thing, the passive lets you keep that subject from switching mid-sentence.
The active equivalent — She fell on the ice and an ambulance took her to hospital — forces a new subject and breaks the flow.
"By + agent": when to include, when to drop
The passive allows you to mention the doer with by, but in most real sentences you leave it out. The agent belongs in the sentence only when it carries information the reader actually needs.
Include by + agent when the doer matters:
In each case, the agent is the point. Drop it and the sentence loses its meaning.
Drop by + agent when the doer is unknown, obvious, or generic:
by someone adds nothing)A useful rule of thumb: if you can imagine writing by someone or by people without adding any information, the by phrase should not be there. Roughly 80 percent of passive sentences in real English have no agent at all.
The get-passive
In informal spoken English, get often replaces be in passive sentences. It is common in conversation and rare in formal writing.
The get-passive carries a slight extra colour: it often describes something sudden, unexpected, or unwelcome happening to the subject. She got caught in the rain feels more immediate than She was caught in the rain. For neutral or formal contexts — news, academic work, business writing — stick with be. Save get for speech and casual texts.
A note on overuse
The passive is a tool, not a style. Long stretches of passive writing feel vague and evasive because the reader keeps losing track of who is doing what. Mistakes were made. Decisions were reached. Changes will be introduced — the meaning is there, but nobody is accountable for any of it.
Default to the active voice when the doer matters to your point. Switch to passive only when one of the five reasons above applies.
Common mistakes
Overusing the passive when the doer matters
Dropping by when the agent is actually important
Using the get-passive in formal writing
Mixing active and passive in the same sentence awkwardly
Keeping a redundant by phrase