The brochure will be finished next month.ĥ: In order to put the new information at the end of the sentence to improve style.The chemical is placed in a test tube and the data entered into the computer.Ĥ: In formal writing instead of using someone/ people/ they (these can be used in speaking or informal writing).The form can be obtained from the post office (people in general).The road is being repaired (unimportant agent).My bike has been stolen (unknown agent).He was arrested (obvious agent, the police).(We are more interested in the painting than the artist in this sentence)Ģ: When who or what causes the action is unknown or unimportant or obvious or 'people in general' The Mona Lisa was painted by Leonardo Da Vinci.You can also make the passive using a passive gerund or a passive infinitive in the same place as a normal gerund or infinitive.ġ: When we want to change the focus of the sentence Passive: He knew that the church had been built in 1915.Active: He knew that people had built the church in 1915.Passive: I thought that John had been kissed by Mary.Active: I thought that Mary had kissed John.This is really the same as a normal passive. You can make the passive in a subordinate clause that has a subject and a normal conjugated verb. Other verbs like this are: ask, offer, teach, tell, lend, promise, sell, throw. Passive: I was given the book (by him)/ The book was given to me (by him).You can choose either of the two objects to be the subject of the passive sentence. Active: He gave me the book / He gave the book to me.Some verbs that have two objects can make two different active sentences, and so two different passive sentences too: Give Click here to learn about irregular verbs. For regular verbs, we make the past participle by adding 'ed' to the infinitive. We make the passive by putting the verb 'to be' into whatever tense we need and then adding the past participle. Two cups of coffee were drunk (we can add 'by me' if we want, but it isn't necessary).In this case, we can use a passive, which puts the object first:

This can happen for lots of reasons (see the explanation further down the page). We might want to put the object first, or perhaps we don't want to say who did something. So, in this example, the subject is 'I', the verb is 'drank' and the object is 'two cups of coffee'.īut, we don't always need to make sentences this way. Has the subject first (the person or thing that does the verb), followed by the verb, and finally the object (the person or thing that the action happens to). See all my exercises about the passive here.Īn active sentence like I drank two cups of coffee.

Active voice passive voice