Passive Voice in English – How and When to Use It?

Just like in Portuguese, the passive voice in English is a way of constructing a sentence in which the recipient of the action – the one who undergoes the action – is presented before the verb that refers to it. In this type of construction, the agent of the action takes a position of “less importance”, sometimes even being completely absent.



The use of the passive voice in English does not mean a lack of action – this nomenclature only refers to the way the verb is used in the sentence.



Thus, while the active voice , which we are more accustomed to, uses the formula “Agent of the action + Action (Verb) + Recipient/Result of the Action” , the passive shopify website design voice expresses an idea using the format “Recipient/Result of the Action + Action (Verb) + Agent of the Action” .



Only transitive verbs (those that require direct or indirect objects) can be expressed in the passive voice.



To illustrate the use of the passive voice in English, we have, for example:







Active Voice



She picked up the bags



(Agent of action) (Action) (Recipient/Result of action)











Passive Voice



The bags were picked up by her



(Recipient/Result of Action) (Action) (Agent of Action)







When using the passive voice in English, the agent of the action (the one who makes it happen) appears only at the end of the sequence, or is not even mentioned in the construction of the sentence.







For example:







Passive Voice



The bags were picked up



(Recipient/Action Result) + (Action)







How to form the passive voice in English?





A sentence formed with the passive voice in English is composed of the following elements:







The subject (recipient/result of the action);





The verb “to be” in a specific tense





The verb of the action in question in the participle;





In some cases, the agent of the action (introduced by “by”);





In some cases, other specific add-ons.





For example:







(1) Subject + (2) verb “to be” + (3) verb in the participle + (4) agent of the action + (5) complement





(1) The party (2) was (3) shut down (4) by the police (5) a couple hours ago





Is using the passive voice in English wrong?





When we write in English and use tools like spell checkers , it is common to notice warnings about the excessive use of the passive voice.



However, this does not mean that its use is grammatically incorrect.



Since the use of the passive voice in English reverses the logical progression of ideas in a text, some reading difficulties may arise. Therefore, many writers prefer to avoid the passive voice whenever possible, precisely because its excessive use can make a text less clear.



As mentioned, using the passive voice can emphasize the recipient or result of an action – and sometimes that is exactly what we want to do in the text.



If we are talking about an object, such as a building, and we want to point out that it underwent renovations last year, it is common to simply say “ The building was renovated last year ” . In this case, the passive voice is quite useful, since there is no intention or need to name the subject responsible for this renovation.



Similarly, the passive voice is also valid when the identity of the agent of the action is unknown. When we consider, for example, a news story covering a fire, we would only expect to read “ The fire was started around midnight ”, since we do not know who started the fire.



Therefore, it can be concluded that there are various cases in which the passive voice is very useful so that a text can flow more naturally.