Passive Voice

THE PASSIVE VOICE

Important things to remember

The passive is a VOICE, not a time tense! I can have a passive voice in any time tense that I want:

Someone stole my bike!

My car is being fixed right now.

(passive sentence in present continuous)

(passive sentence in past simple)

The passive voice is much more common in English than in Spanish. But it's more common in written English than in spoken English.

When do I use a passive?

When I don't want to draw attention to the person, animal or thing that commited an action.

Someone has stolen my bike.

* I don't know who does it:

My bike has been stolen.

* It's obvious who does it:

The police will arrest the thief.

The thief will be arrested.

* I don't want to say who does it:

I broke the window.

The window was broken.

active sentence

passive sentence

Because I use the passive to get rid of unimportant information (who did the action), I normally erase the active subject. But if I want to conserve it as an object in the passive sentence, I use the particle "by".

The thief will be arrested by the police.

How do I make a passive?

To create a passive sentence, I always add [be] and a past participle. [Be] can go in any tense I need, but I always add one, even if I already had another.

They are fixing my car

My car is being fixed

My active tense is a present continuous, so I already have a [be]

When I add the [be] for the passive, now I have two "be"s.

How do I make a passive?

My car is being fixed

This sentence is a PASSIVE in PRESENT CONTINUOUS. I need all the elements to make both!

In the passive, we swap the subject and the object.

Remember that if you are using pronouns, we have to use the correct ones for each possition!

She loves him

Subject

Object

She loves him

He is loved by her

Object

Subject

Personal Pronouns Cheat Sheet

I have two objects in my active sentence. What do I do?

He gave Mary flowers

Direct Object

Indirect Object

subject

You can make two different passives!

Mary was given flowers

Flowers were given to Mary

CHEAT SHEET: PERSONAL PRONOUNS

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