Passive Voice

What is the Passive Voice?

The passive voice is a grammatical construction in which the subject of the sentence is acted upon — receives the action — rather than performing it. In active voice: The team completed the project. In passive voice: The project was completed by the team.

The passive voice is not a "weaker" alternative to the active — it is a different tool, designed for situations where the action itself, the result, or the recipient of the action is more important than who performed it.

Active vs Passive — The Structure

Active: Subject + verb + object

"The committee reviewed the proposal."

Passive: Object becomes subject + be + past participle (+ by + agent — optional)

"The proposal was reviewed (by the committee)."

Formation: The tense is carried by the verb be. The past participle never changes.

Passive Across All Tenses

When to Use Passive — and When Not To

Use passive when:

• The agent (who did it) is unknown: The letter was delivered sometime last night.
• The agent is obvious: The suspect was arrested and charged.
• The agent is unimportant: The building was completed in 1962.
• You want to focus on the action or result, not the doer: The decision has been made.
• In formal/academic writing, to create objectivity: The samples were analyzed under controlled conditions.
• To avoid blaming or naming someone directly: Errors were made in the original assessment.

Avoid passive when:

• Active voice is clearer and more direct: She finished the report. (not The report was finished by her.)
• The active version is shorter with no loss of meaning
• In conversational English — passive often sounds unnatural and stiff
• You are deliberately obscuring accountability in a misleading way

GET Passive (Informal)

In spoken and informal English, get is used instead of be to form the passive:

"She got promoted last month." / "He got fired on Friday." / "The car got damaged in the storm."

Get passive is common in speech and informal writing. It often implies that the subject had some involvement in or was affected by the outcome. It is not appropriate in formal or academic writing.

Impersonal Passive

Used to introduce reported beliefs, claims, and general opinions in a formal, impersonal register:

"It is believed that..." / "It is said that..." / "It is reported that..." / "It is expected that..."

These structures are common in journalism, academic writing, and formal documents — they distance the statement from any individual speaker and present it as shared knowledge or general perception.

"It is widely believed that the policy was introduced too quickly." "It has been reported that the talks broke down over the terms of the agreement."

Passive with Modal Verbs

Modals + passive combine for obligation, possibility, and expectation in formal contexts:

"The report should be submitted by Friday." "All applications must be received before the deadline." "The decision can be reconsidered if new evidence emerges." "The project may be extended subject to additional funding." "This issue needs to be addressed immediately."

Passive in Daily Life

Situation 1 — News and Journalism

"Three people were injured in the incident. The area has been cordoned off and an investigation has been launched. No arrests have been made at this stage."

The passive removes the need to name who did each action — the police, the authorities — keeping focus on the events themselves.

Situation 2 — Science and Academic Reports

"The samples were collected over a six-week period and were stored at -20°C. All measurements were taken using calibrated equipment. The data was analyzed using standard statistical methods."

Academic writing uses passive throughout to maintain objectivity and focus on method rather than researcher.

Situation 3 — Professional Emails

"Please note that the deadline has been moved to Friday, the 18th. All submissions should be sent to the committee address. It is expected that the review process will be completed within ten business days."

Passive removes the actor (whoever moved the deadline) and focuses on what happened and what is expected of the reader.

Situation 4 — Signs and Public Notices

"This area is monitored by security cameras." "Vehicles must not be left unattended." "This product was made in the USA." "Unauthorized vehicles will be towed."

Short, impersonal passives are the standard form for public notices — they state what is or will be done without a named actor.

Situation 5 — Workplace Announcements

"It has been decided that the office will be closed on Monday. All staff are asked to work from home. Further details will be communicated by end of day Friday."

Institutional announcements use passive to describe decisions without attributing them personally — "it has been decided" avoids "we have decided" or "the management has decided."

Sentences — Beginner to Advanced

Beginner

"The email was sent this morning. The meeting has been moved to Thursday."

Simple past passive and present perfect passive. Both used to communicate results without mentioning the person who performed the actions.

Beginner

"English is spoken in over 50 countries. It is considered the global language of business."

Present simple passive for facts. Is considered = passive used to report a widely held opinion.

Intermediate

"The project had been delayed twice before the new manager was brought in — and even then, the full scope of the problem wasn't acknowledged until the third review."

Three passives in sequence: Past Perfect passive, Past Simple passive, Past Simple passive negative. The passives collectively build a story without naming responsible individuals.

Intermediate

"The proposal will be reviewed by the senior committee, and a decision is expected to be communicated within the month."

Future passive and a passive infinitive (expected to be communicated) — professional announcement register.

Advanced

"It has been widely acknowledged that the original estimates were based on projections that should have been tested more rigorously before being presented as reliable data."

Impersonal present perfect passive (has been widely acknowledged). Past passive (were based on). Modal perfect passive (should have been tested). Passive gerund (being presented). Four passive structures in one analytical sentence.

Advanced

"Had the warning signs been taken seriously, the bridge would have been closed before the storm, and most of the damage could have been avoided."

Passive in an inverted third conditional (had been taken). Modal perfect passives (would have been closed, could have been avoided). The passives keep the focus on the failure, not on any individual.

How Passive Voice Elevates Your English

Basic: "Someone made errors in the assessment and they created problems later."

Elevated: "Errors were made in the original assessment — the precise nature of which was not fully understood at the time — and those errors were compounded rather than corrected when the review process was conducted without the benefit of the complete dataset."

(Each passive removes a named actor, which is appropriate here — the focus is on what happened, not blame. "Was not fully understood" and "was compounded" extend the consequences. "Was conducted without" is precise and formal.)

Basic: "We decided to cancel the event."

Elevated: "It has been decided that the event will not proceed as originally planned. A revised format is currently being explored, and further information will be communicated as soon as details have been confirmed."

(Institutional tone achieved entirely through passive voice. "It has been decided" removes personal ownership. "Is currently being explored" — present continuous passive for ongoing process. "Will be communicated" and "have been confirmed" — future and present perfect passives for timeline management.)

Memory Tips

The "By" Test

To check if a sentence can be made passive, ask: "Can I add 'by [someone]' to it?" If yes, the sentence has a transitive verb that can be passivized. "She wrote the report" → "The report was written by her" ✓. "She arrived" → "arrived" is intransitive — no passive possible.

The "Be + Past Participle" Formula

Every passive uses this exact structure: a form of be + past participle. The tense lives in be. The past participle never changes. "Is written / was written / has been written / will be written" — the past participle written stays the same throughout.

GET Passive = Informal Only

Get passive (got promoted, get fired, got damaged) is conversational. In any professional, academic, or formal context, use be passive. "The application was rejected" ✓ / "The application got rejected" ✓ only in informal contexts.

Impersonal Passive for Shared Beliefs

"It is said that...", "It is believed that...", "It is reported that..." — these structures are perfect for presenting information as widely held without committing personally to it. They are essential in academic writing and formal journalism.

When You Don't Know the Agent — Use Passive

"Someone broke into the office" can become "The office was broken into" — the agent is unknown or unimportant, so passive is the natural choice. Passive is not weakness; it is precision.

Never Over-Passivize

Passive is a tool, not a default. Academic writing should alternate active and passive — all-passive writing becomes monotonous and hard to follow. The test: does removing the agent add precision or obscure accountability? If it adds precision, passive is right. If it obscures responsibility that should be named, use active.

Common Mistakes vs Correct Forms

Formal vs Informal

Informal:

"Someone moved the meeting without telling me — I only found out an hour before." "They've decided to close the office early on Friday."

Active voice, named agent, conversational.

Formal:

"It has been brought to our attention that a number of anomalies were identified in the preliminary data. These have since been corrected, and the revised figures are enclosed for your reference." "It is expected that the report will be completed and distributed to all relevant parties before the end of the quarter."

Entirely passive. All agents removed. Focus entirely on actions, results, and expectations. This is the standard for institutional and professional written communication.

Idioms with the Passive

"to sweep under the rug" Meaning: To conceal a problem, mistake, or uncomfortable truth by deliberately ignoring it or hiding it from view — to avoid dealing with something difficult by pretending it doesn't exist.

"For years, the issue was quietly swept under the rug by an institution that had more invested in protecting its own reputation than in addressing the discomfort that an honest reckoning would have required."

"It is widely believed that the original findings were not published because they were inconvenient — that they were, in effect, swept under the rug at a stage when acknowledging them would have been more productive than the silence that followed."

"to be left in the dark" Meaning: To be kept uninformed about something — to be deliberately or negligently excluded from information that affects you.

"The team was left completely in the dark about the restructuring until two days before the announcement — a decision that had apparently been made weeks earlier but was not communicated downward, with results for morale that should have been predictable."

"It is difficult to overstate how damaging it is to be left in the dark about decisions that directly affect your role — the information vacuum is invariably filled with speculation, and the speculation is almost always worse than the truth would have been."

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