Level: beginner
Transitive verbs have both active and passive forms:
| Active | Passive |
|---|---|
| The hunter killed the lion. | The lion was killed by the hunter. |
| Someone has cleaned the windows. | The windows have been cleaned. |
Passive forms are made up of the verb be with a past participle:
| Subject | be | Past participle | Adverbial |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | is | spoken | all over the world. |
| The windows | have been | cleaned. | |
| Lunch | was being | served. | |
| The work | will be | finished | soon. |
| They | might have been | invited | to the party. |
If we want to show the person or thing doing the action, we use by:
She was attacked by a dangerous dog.
The money was stolen by her husband.
- Active and passive voice 1
- Active and passive voice 2
- Active and passive voice 3
Level: intermediate
The passive infinitive is made up of to be with a past participle:
The doors are going to be locked at ten o'clock.
You shouldn't have done that. You ought to be punished.
We sometimes use the verb get with a past participle to form the passive:
Be careful with that glass. It might get broken.
Peter got hurt in a crash.
We can use the indirect object as the subject of a passive verb:
| Active | Passive |
|---|---|
| I gave him a book for his birthday. | He was given a book for his birthday. |
| Someone sent her a cheque for a thousand euros. |
She was sent a cheque for a thousand euros. |
We can use phrasal verbs in the passive:
| Active | Passive |
|---|---|
| They called off the meeting. | The meeting was called off. |
| His grandmother looked after him. | He was looked after by his grandmother. |
| They will send him away to school. | He will be sent away to school. |
- Active and passive voice 4
- Active and passive voice 5
Level: advanced
Some verbs which are very frequently used in the passive are followed by the to-infinitive:
| be supposed to | be expected to | be asked to | be told to |
| be scheduled to | be allowed to | be invited to | be ordered to |
John has been asked to make a speech at the meeting.
You are supposed to wear a uniform.
The meeting is scheduled to start at seven.
- Active and passive voice 6
- Active and passive voice 7
Hello bakh.sh85,
No, that's not a passive form. To make a passive, you need to use be + past participle. It's possible to replace 'be' with 'get' or 'become', but you still need a past participle, and in your sentence 'angry' is an adjective, not a past participle.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Sir
Could you kindly clarify the following sentence.
The patient entered the clinic to meet the doctor. Here the main verb is enter and the voice of the sentence is active. Then how do make it passive? The clinic was entered by the patient....can it be said? It sounds a little strange. Please help.
Thank you
Hello amrita_enakshi,
Your sentence is correct - that is how the passive would be formed for this sentence. You're also right that it sounds strange and it's not a sentence we would normally form with passive voice. We do sometimes use 'enter' as a passive verb form but not when we add the agent with 'by'. Thus, the sentence is grammatically correct but clumsy stylistically, I would say.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Rsb,
Yes, 'get' can be used in the place of 'be' in passive forms in informal situations. I'd suggest you think of the verbs 'be' and 'get' in the first pairs of sentences in your examples not as active but rather as link verbs.
Link verbs establish a link between a noun and an adjective or other noun -- they don't have objects (remember that transitive verbs by definition have an object).
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hi Rafaela1,
Yes! These are both grammatically correct. (Is Russian Blue a cat?)
In British English, it's also common to use the present perfect for the second sentence: She's disappeared / She has disappeared.
Best wishes,
Jonathan
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Nuro,
I don't think the phrase 'are branded' is a passive verb here. Instead, it's the verb 'be' and the adjective 'branded' (which is formed from the verb 'brand'). If it were a passive verb, it would be in the past ('were branded') because that is the time that the words were spoken and entered the speaker's memory.
There is no need for an agent to be included in a passive sentence; indeed, much of the time, the whole point of a passive sentence is not to mention the agent. When I think about the sentence 'The words he spoke as he left us were branded in my memory', I'd understand the situation to be what caused his words to make such an impression on this person -- in other words, the situation is the agent.
I hope this helps.
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Yap,
'Being' here indicates that the form is continuous:
The continuous passive form is used just as other continuous forms are used: when something is in progress and is interrupted by another action, for example.
Your question is not really about passive voice as all three options are passive forms. What you are asking is when to use the past simple (1), the present perfect (2) and the past continuous (3). The fact they are all passives does not change the differences between these three forms.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Nuro,
It's true that you can use 'with' to talk about a tool in a passive sentence, but that's not the only use of 'with'. It is a very common word with many uses. Here it describes the reason for the action -- see the 'with preposition (CAUSE)' entry (the eighth heading in purple) on the page I linked to for more examples.
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Nuro,
I think you would probably see the passive sentence in most sports journalism, but your sentence is perfect -- great work!
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Rsb,
Both forms (want sb to do and want sb doing) are grammatically possible.
Generally, I think we use want sb doing when we are talking about an existing situation which we want to continue or stop:
We also use this to describe an imagined situation in the future which we hope to find or avoid:
The infinitive form (want sb to do) generally refers to a particular action in the future;
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hi Nuro,
This is an ambiguous case. The word 'excited' could be an adjective:
On the other hand, you could see it as a past participle in a passive construction:
It doesn't make any difference to the sentence, really; it's simply a question of terminology.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Rsb,
It's correct that you can interpret the sentence either way. However, I would not say that there are two meanings here. The meaning really doesn't change either way.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Rsb,
Yes, that's right.
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Ahmed Imam,
I don't think either of those sound particulary natural, to be honest. Although I don't know the context or exactly what you intend to say, I would guess that you are looking for something like this:
or
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Ahmed Iman,
All three forms are possible grammatically, but they have different meanings and only one fits the context.
As your example has a context in which 'they don't need preparation anymore' I think it is clear that the third option is the correct choice.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Ahmed Imam,
When have is used in a causitive structure it is possible to use it with continuous aspect, so all of these sentences are grammatically correct.
With the adverb 'now', there is no difference between sentences 1a and 1b. Both describe a process which is in progress; the simple and continuous forms do not change this.
The second pair of sentences have some differences, though we really need a context to be sure of the meaning. Sentence 2a describes the person's intention, but does not make it clear whether or not the repair was done. Sentence 2b tells us that the repair began, but may or may not have been completed.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello NicoleID,
I think part of the problem here is that you are confusing two forms. In sentence 1a there is no present perfect. The construction 'be thought to...' is followed by an infinitive, but there are many infintive forms:
to work - infinitive
to be working - continuous infinitive
to have worked - perfect infinitive
to have been working - continuous perfect infinitive
etc.
In 1a, to have been is a perfect infinitive. The form is consistent with the pattern.
In 2a, to have been working is a continuous perfect infinitive. Again, it is consistent with the pattern.
If the normal infinitive had been used, the sentences would have been about the present; the perfect infinitive make the past time reference clear.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Ahmed Imam,
I think options 1 and 3 are correct. Option 2 does not sound correct to my ear.
However, as the subject in the original sentence is 'he' you should say 'him' rather than 'me'.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello MJEnglishLearner,
With questions like this it's generally helpful to give an example so we can be sure that we understand what you mean.
If I understand you correctly, you are asking about the order of phrases in passive voice sentences. For example:
Both of these are grammatically possible. I don't think there is any preference in terms of style and clarity.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Rafaela1,
This is something people say when, for example, you have apologised to them but they don't think you needed to apologise, though there are other possibilities depending on the context.
I've normally heard it in the singular ('no apology is necessary') and in speaking it's often used without the verb 'be' ('no apology necessary').
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello again AllyEnglish,
Yes, you are right -- those sentences are all written in the active voice already. Perhaps they got the instructions backwards.
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello sarahmh,
I'm afraid I'm not completely certain I understand your question, but I'll try to explain this.
When we change an active verb form into the passive without changing any other feature of the verb (person, number, tense, etc.), there is a change in meaning. Roughly speaking, the subject of the active verb becomes the object of the passive verb.
In terms of the form, where a passive form always has a form of the verb 'be' in the appropriate tense (in your example, 'am') and a past participle form of the verb that carries the meaning (in your example, 'called'). This is just how passive verbs are formed in English (and many other Indo-European languages).
Does that help you?
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team