Passive Voice

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In this post, I wanna tell you about passive voice.

Passive voice means that a subject is a recipient of a verb’s action. You may have learned that the passive voice is weak and incorrect, but it isn’t that simple. When used correctly and in moderation, the passive voice is fine.

Passive voice

A sentence is in the passive voice, on the other hand, when the subject is acted on by the verb. The passive voice is always constructed with a conjugated form of to be plus the verb’s past participle. Doing this usually generates a preposition as well. That sounds much more complicated than it is—passive voice is actually quite easy to detect. For these examples of passive voice, we will transform the three active sentences above to illustrate the difference.

Passive voice examples

Bananas are adored by monkeys.

The money was counted by the cashier.

The squirrel was chased by the dog.

Let’s take a closer look at the first pair of sentences, “Monkeys adore bananas” and “Bananas are adored by monkeys.” The active sentence consists of monkeys (subject) + adore (verb) + bananas (object). The passive sentence consists of bananas (object) + are adored (a form of to be plus the past participle adored) + by (preposition) + monkeys (subject). Making the sentence passive flipped the structure and necessitated the preposition by. In fact, all three of the transformed sentences above required the addition of by.

How to change a sentence in passive voice to active voice

Here is an example of a business communication that could be strengthened by abandoning the passive voice.

An error has occurred with your account, but every attempt was made to remedy it.

That sentence is not incorrect, but it does sound a bit stiff and dishonest. It sounds less trustworthy than it could—almost evasive. Who wants to do business with a company that avoids taking full responsibility by slipping into formal passive voice territory? Face the responsibility head on instead. Own it.

We made an error with your account, but we have made every attempt to remedy it.

To make that sentence active rather than passive, I identified the subject: we. It was “our company” that was responsible.

If there are any questions, I can be reached at the number below.