Active and passive voice
Active and passive voice
In English, verbs can be used in two “voices”: active and passive. Some people might tell you that you should always use the active voice. But really the active voice and the passive voice can both be useful.
First of all, we need to know the difference between the active voice and the passive voice. Let’s start with the active.
Many of the simplest sentences in English have a subject, a verb and an object.
For example:
- Dogs eat meat.
- She wrote the story.
- I drew a picture.
The subject tells us who does something.
The verb tells us what action is performed.
The object tells us who or what the action was done to.
When we use the passive voice to say the same things, we change things around a little.
For example:
- Meat is eaten by dogs.
- The story was written by her.
- The picture was drawn by me.
The order is now object, verb, subject. We have used the past participle of the verb and added a form of the verb “to be”. We have also inserted “by” before the subject (but in some cases we don’t need to include a subject).
These examples of active and passive voice show simple versions of each. Now let’s look at some other examples.
- We eat breakfast at 7.30. (Active)
- Breakfast is eaten at 7.30. (Passive)
- Scientists perform many experiments in that laboratory. (Active)
- Many experiments are performed in that laboratory. (Passive)
- The thieves broke into the bank. (Active)
- The bank was broken into by the thieves. (Passive)
- Some people think that the world is flat. (Active)
- It is thought by some people that the world is flat. (Passive)
In the active voice the emphasis is on the person or thing that performs the action.
In the passive voice the emphasis is on the person or thing on which the action is performed.
So, how do we decide whether to use the active or the passive voice?
The main advice about this is that the active voice is more suitable for informal occasions. Perhaps this is why some people thank that it is “better” than the passive voice. But there are occasions when we need to be more formal, and then it is often better to use the passive voice. It is often used in official reports.
For example:
- These buildings are often used for meetings of the committee.
- This conclusion was reached after a great deal of discussion.
- The police investigation showed that 200 cars had been stolen.
- It is often suggested that the weather in the 21st century is very different from that in the past.
- These experiments were conducted by researchers in many countries.
Posted by Graham