Two TVs were stolen from the local gas stations last night. Use passive voice when you don't know who did the action, don’t want to assign blame, or don't want to emphasize the doer of the action. The focus is on the diagrams and not on the people who invented them. Reed-Kellogg sentence diagrams were invented to help students learn grammar. Use the passive voice to focus on the receiver of the action (direct object). You can use the passive voice for several important reasons. Īctive Sentence: Dolly Parton owns the Dollywood theme park in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. Passive Sentence Changing to Active: The Dollywood theme park in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, is owned by Dolly Parton. Passive Sentence: The Dollywood theme park in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, is owned by Dolly Parton. To switch from active voice to passive voice, place the doer of the action into the subject position and remove the passive 'be' helping verb. The Pure Michigan campaign is being used by the state of Michigan to enhance tourism. The Washington Monument was designed to honor George Washington. Passive voice verbs will always have 'be' as a helping verb, and the main verb will never end in 'ing.' Most often, the main verb will end in 'en' or 'ed.' The state of Michigan is using the Pure Michigan campaign to enhance tourism. Robert Hills designed the Washington Monument to honor George Washington. When an active verb does have 'be' as a helping verb, the main verb will end in 'ing.'

What does the verb look like?Īctive voice verbs can appear on their own and do not require 'be' as a helping verb. The Washington Monument was designed by Robert Mills to honor George Washington.

The one doing the action may appear in a prepositional phrase or not appear in the sentence at all. In passive voice, the subject of the sentence is not the one doing the action: it will receive the action instead. In active voice, the subject of the sentence is the one doing the action. Who or what is actually doing the action? You can differentiate active and passive voice by the subject's role and the way the verb looks. Sentences using passive voice are not necessarily wrong, just less effective than active voice. Sometimes a prepositional phrase like 'by the' in the sentences above indicates that the action is performed on the subject, and that the sentence is passive.Writing in the active voice makes the meaning clear while keeping sentences from becoming complicated and wordy.

Don't assume that just because there is a form of 'be' that the sentence is passive, however. You can recognize passive voice because the verb phrase will include a form of be (was, am, are, been, is). 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. The presence of a be-verb, however, does not necessarily mean that the sentence is in passive voice. You can recognize passive-voice expressions because the verb phrase will always include a form of be, such as am, is, was, were, are, or been. Instead, the writing appears to convey information that is not limited or biased by individual perspectives or personal interests. 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. In scientific writing, however, passive voice is more readily accepted since using it allows one to write without using personal pronouns or the names of particular researchers as the subjects of sentences (see the third example above). Also, overuse of passive voice throughout an essay can cause your prose to seem flat and uninteresting. Sometimes the use of passive voice can create awkward sentences, as in the last example above.

The subject of the passive voice sentence performs the action expressed in the verb in this example. Writing Letters of Recommendation for Students.

Passive and active voice