Distinguishing Between Active or Passive Voice

Ask:  Who is performing the action?

If you're unsure if the sentence is active or passive voice, you can answer a few questions:

1. What is the subject?

2. What is the verb?

3. Who or what does the action of the verb? 

If the answers for #1 and #3 are the same, the sentence is using active voice. 

For example: 

• • • The dog bit the boy. 

1. What is the subject? The dog

2. What is the verb? Bit

3. Who or what does the action of the verb (bit the boy)? The dog

Because both #1 or #3 are the same, this sentence is using active voice.

Form of object + "to be" + past participle of a transitive verb = passive voice

A passive verb phrase will always include a form of be, such as am, is, was, were, are, or been plus a past participle. 

• • • Example: The Roman empire was invaded by barbarian tribes.

    • Example: Caleb's house will be foreclosed because he is behind on his mortgage.

The presence of a be-verb, however, does not necessarily mean that the sentence is in passive voice. 

• • • The "to be" verb may describe a state of being, not action.

      • • Example: John is a great student.

    • The sentence may be using a progressive or a perfect tense.

      • • Example: They are going to the store. (present progressive tense)

        • Example: When I arrived home, he had already called. (past perfect tense)

    • The "to be" verb, especially have or has, could be acting as a modal. 

      • • Example: We have to go the store. 

To avoid mistaking active voice for passive voice, watch for the past participle used in the passive voice or use the questions above to determine who is performing the action.

Passive Voice:  by phrase after verb phrase

Another way to recognize passive-voice sentences is that they may include a "by the..." phrase after the verb. The agent performing the action, if named, is the object of the preposition in this phrase. 

• • • Example: The missing woman was kidnapped by her ex-husband.

    • Example: The Harry Potter series was written by JK Rowling.

Reasons to choose passive voice

Highlighting actions over agents

Sometimes writers find using an indirect expression is rhetorically effective in a given situation, so they choose passive voice.

Writers in the sciences conventionally use passive voice more often than writers in other discourses. Passive voice makes sense when:

• • • the agent performing the action is obvious, unimportant, or unknown 

    • a writer wishes to postpone mentioning the agent until the last part of the sentence 

    • a writer wishes to avoid mentioning the agent at all 

The passive voice is effective in such circumstances because it highlights the action and what is acted upon rather than the agent performing the action. 

• • • Example: A new experimental liver transplant operation was performed successfully yesterday.

    • Example: Their research on artificial limbs will be presented at this year's conference.

This practice helps to create the appearance of an objective, fact-based discourse because writers can present research and conclusions without attributing them to particular agents. Instead, the writing appears to convey information that is not limited or biased by individual perspectives or personal interests.

Inclusive writing

Using the passive voice can be an effective way to make your writing gender-inclusive. When an action is represented by a gendered pronoun (such as "he," "she," or "he or she" and their variations), you can often remove the pronoun by constructing the sentence in the passive voice. Here are some examples:

Shifting the emphasis

The three examples below visually demonstrate how the choice to use active voice versus passive voice can have an impact on where importance is placed. In the first image, importance is placed on who committed the murder. In the other two examples, less importance is placed on who did the murder and more so on the person that was murdered.

Quizzes

External Resources