Active and passive sentences

In a nutshell

Understanding active and passive voice allows you to write more varied sentences. In this summary, you will learn how to use the active and passive voice and how to turn an active sentence into a passive one.

The active voice

Active voice is just another way of saying that a sentence is in the normal word order.

Start with the subject (doer of the verb).
Write the verb (the action).
And, after the verb, there might be an object (thing/person the verb is done to).

Example

The boy brushes the dog.

The passive voice

In a passive sentence, the object comes first. This might be for a range of reasons, like for emphasis or if you don't want to say or simply don't know, who the doer (subject) of the verb is!

To understand how to change this word order, follow these simple steps:

(1) Start by labelling the subject (S), verb (V) and object (O) of the sentence.

The boy	brushes	the dog.
S	V	O

(2) Since it's passive, put the object first. Swap the order of the subject and object.


The dog		the boy.

(3) All that is left now is the verb. However, you cannot just write the verb in the same form - look what sentence this creates!

The dog brushes the boy.

Now the meaning of the sentence has changed – oops! Remember, you still want to say that the dog is receiving the brushing. You need to change the verb 'brushes' to the passive voice to keep this meaning.

To change a verb into the passive voice you need:

the verb *to be* (in the correct tense)	+ the past participle
is	brushed

(4) One last step! Now that the subject is at the end of the sentence, you need the magic word "by" to show who is responsible.

The dog is brushed by the boy.

Tip: If you'd like, you can even leave out the subject altogether. This can be useful if you don't know who/what the subject is.

Example

The dog is brushed.