Its forms include am, are, is, was, were, and will be, which we learned about earlier in the course. Remember that to be conjugates irregularly. The passive is created using the verb to be (e.g., the song is sung it was struck from behind). Despite these sentences being completely grammatically sound, we don’t know who hit “me” or what struck the car. The passive voice “hides” who does the action. You may have noticed something unique about the previous two sentences: the subject of the sentence is not the person (or thing) performing the action.

Jasper was thrown from the car when it was struck from behind.

Let’s look at a couple more examples of the passive voice: So just what is the difference between these two voices? In the simplest terms, an active voice sentence is written in the form of “A does B.” (For example, “Carmen sings the song.”) A passive voice sentence is written in the form of “B is done by A.” (For example, “The song is sung by Carmen.”) Both constructions are grammatically sound and correct.

When the passive voice is used to frequently, it can make your writing seem flat and drab. However, there are some instances where the passive voice is a better choice than the active. Why is this the case? Why is the passive voice so hated? After all, it’s been used twice on this page already (three times now).

In both of these instances, you were (likely) guided away from the passive voice. You’ve probably heard of the passive voice-perhaps in a comment from an English teacher or in the grammar checker of a word processor. It can refer to the general “feel” of the writing, or it can be used in a more technical sense. In this section, we will focus on the latter sense as we discuss active and passive voice.

Active and passive voice