Passive Voice in English: How and When to Use It

Open any newspaper and you’ll meet the same sentence shape again and again: “A new hospital was opened on Monday.” “Two men were arrested last night.” “The bridge will be finished in June.” Nobody tells you who opened the hospital or who will finish the bridge — and honestly, you don’t care. The news is the hospital, the men and the bridge.

In the normal, active voice, the subject does the action: “Workers built this bridge in 1990.” The passive voice turns the camera around. The person or thing that receives the action moves to the front of the sentence, and the doer quietly steps backstage — sometimes for good.

Here’s the secret nobody tells learners: the passive voice isn’t exam grammar. Newsreaders, scientists, police officers and office workers use it every day. By the end of this lesson, you’ll use it too — correctly, and only when it actually helps.

What Is the Passive Voice?

The recipe never changes: be + past participle — the third form of the verb, like written, built, stolen or made. The verb be carries the tense. The participle just sits there, calm and unchanged.

Making a passive sentence takes three steps:

1. Start with an active sentence: “The cat chased the mouse.”
2. Move the object — the mouse — to the front of the sentence.
3. Add the correct form of be plus the past participle, keeping the same tense: “The mouse was chased.”

If the doer matters, park them at the end with by: “The mouse was chased by the cat.” But here’s a useful fact: most real passive sentences never mention the doer at all. That disappearing act is usually the whole point.

One slow example. Active: “Someone stole my phone.” We don’t know the doer, so the passive is natural: “My phone was stolen.” The word was carries the past tense, and stolen does the rest. For a shorter official explanation of the same idea, the British Council’s LearnEnglish lesson on passives is worth a visit.

The Passive in Six Tenses

Good news: you don’t have to learn six new structures. You learn one structure, and then you let the verb be travel through the English tenses you already know. Watch one family of sentences — a road and the people who repair it — walk through all six tenses:

Tense	Form	Example
Present simple	am / is / are + participle	The road is repaired every spring.
Past simple	was / were + participle	The road was repaired last month.
Present continuous	am / is / are being + participle	Look — the road is being repaired this week.
Present perfect	has / have been + participle	The road has been repaired three times this year.
Future (will)	will be + participle	The road will be repaired next week.
Modal (can, must)	modal + be + participle	The road must be repaired before winter.

See the pattern? The participle — repaired — never changes. Only be changes its clothes. If the second row is new to you, our past simple tense guide will make “was repaired” feel easy, and the fourth row makes sense once you’ve seen the present perfect tense. The future simple tense works exactly like row five, just without the extra “be”.

When English Loves the Passive

1. When the doer is unknown. “My bike was stolen from outside the station.” You have no idea who took it, so the active voice isn’t just weaker here — it’s impossible.

2. When the doer is obvious or unimportant. “The driver was arrested within an hour.” Arrested by whom? The police, obviously. And “Fresh bread is baked here every morning” doesn’t need the baker’s name and address.

3. In science and processes. “First, the water is heated to 100 degrees. Then the powder is added slowly, and the mixture is stirred for five minutes.” A lab report describes steps, not people — nobody writes “I heated the water” in a science paper.

4. In news and reports. “Two passengers were injured in the accident.” “A new library will be opened in the city centre next month.” The event is the star of the story; the doer is background staff.

5. For politeness and formality. Offices love the passive because it sounds calm and official: “Your application has been received.” Compare “You made a mistake” with “A mistake has been made in your bill.” Same bad news, much softer landing.

When NOT to Use It

Balance matters. The passive is a tool, not a costume for every sentence. In friendly emails, stories and everyday writing, the active voice is usually shorter, warmer and clearer: “I fixed the car” beats “The car was fixed by me” almost every time. Fill a whole paragraph with passives and your readers will feel like they’re walking through fog.

There’s also one hard rule, and it’s a kind one: a verb with no object can never become passive. Happen, arrive, sleep, die, come and go take no object, so they simply refuse. “The accident happened” is correct; “the accident was happened” is impossible. Nobody can “happen” something to somebody.

And one small warning, delivered with a smile: powerful people sometimes hide inside the passive. Every politician on Earth has said, in the middle of a crisis, “Mistakes were made.” Made by whom? The passive doesn’t say. Now you know the trick — and you’ll spot it on the news tonight.

The Get-Passive (Informal Cousin)

In relaxed, spoken English, get often replaces be in front of the participle. The get-passive loves everyday events — and, let’s be honest, everyday bad luck:

• “I got locked out of my flat last night.”
• “His phone got broken during the football match.”
• “We got caught in the rain without an umbrella.”

Happily, it isn’t all disasters: “After five years at the company, Sara got promoted” is a get-passive with a smile on its face. You’ll also hear get married, get dressed and get invited. Keep the get-passive for conversation, though — in formal writing, the be-passive is the safer suit.

5 Common Mistakes

1. Forgetting the verb “be”.
✗ “The letter written yesterday.”
✓ “The letter was written yesterday.”
Why: without a form of be, the passive has no engine. That first one isn’t a sentence at all — it’s a postcard.

2. Using the wrong verb form.
✗ “The report was wrote by the manager.”
✓ “The report was written by the manager.”
Why: after be, English always wants the third form — write, wrote, written.

3. Trying to make “happen” passive.
✗ “The accident was happened last night.”
✓ “The accident happened last night.”
Why: happen has no object, so there is nothing to move to the front. It can never be passive.

4. The wrong pronoun after “by”.
✗ “This photo was taken by I.”
✓ “This photo was taken by me.”
Why: after a preposition like by, use object pronouns — me, him, her, us, them.

5. Doubling the machinery.
✗ “The wall is being build now.”
✓ “The wall is being built now.”
Why: one chain is enough — the be forms go in front, and the participle at the end must be finished: built, not build. (“Was been built” is the same traffic jam.)

Quick Practice

Your turn. Rewrite each sentence in the passive voice. Keep the same tense, and drop the doer when he or she isn’t needed. The answers are just below — no peeking until you’ve tried!

1. Someone cleans this office every day.
2. The storm damaged our roof last night.
3. They are building a new school in our town.
4. She has written three emails today.
5. The teacher will check the tests tomorrow.
6. You must finish this report by Friday.
7. People speak English in many countries.
8. A famous chef opened this restaurant in 2010.
9. They are repairing my car at the moment.
10. The company has hired twenty new workers.

Answers

1. This office is cleaned every day. (Present simple — “someone” is dropped.)
2. Our roof was damaged by the storm last night. (Past simple — the storm is worth keeping.)
3. A new school is being built in our town. (Present continuous — “is being” + participle.)
4. Three emails have been written today. (Present perfect — plural, so “have been”.)
5. The tests will be checked tomorrow. (Future — will be + participle.)
6. This report must be finished by Friday. (Modal — must be + participle.)
7. English is spoken in many countries. (Present simple — “people” disappears.)
8. This restaurant was opened by a famous chef in 2010. (Past simple — the chef is the interesting part.)
9. My car is being repaired at the moment. (Present continuous again — you’re getting good at this.)
10. Twenty new workers have been hired by the company. (Present perfect — “have been hired”.)

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the passive voice “wrong” or just weak writing?

Neither. Teachers who ban the passive completely are being a little dramatic. The passive is the normal, correct choice in news, science, reports and polite office writing. It only becomes weak when a writer uses it everywhere, or uses it to hide who did something. Think of it like salt: essential in the right amount, terrible as the whole meal.

Can every verb be passive?

No — only verbs that take an object (transitive verbs) can turn passive, because the object is what moves to the front. Happen, arrive, sleep, die and seem have no object to move, so they stay active forever. Quick test: if a verb can answer “what?” or “who?” after it, it can probably go passive.

Why do exams love the passive so much?

Because one passive sentence quietly tests three things at once: the forms of be, the past participle, and tense control. Exams like IELTS also reward it in formal writing — describing a process in Writing Task 1 (“the water is heated, then it is poured…”) is almost impossible without the passive. Learn it once, and you score in several places.

Where does the passive really live — speaking or writing?

Mostly in writing: news reports, science, official notices, business emails and paperwork. In everyday speech it’s rarer, but it still appears in fixed moments — “I was born in Karachi”, “Dinner is served!”, “You’re invited” — and the get-passive (“I got stuck in traffic”) is pure spoken English. Read English news for a week and you’ll meet the passive more times than you can count.

How can I spot a passive sentence quickly?

Use the be + participle test: look for a form of be (am, is, are, was, were, been, being) followed by a past participle. There’s also a sillier test that never fails: if you can add “by zombies” to the end of the sentence and it still makes sense, it’s passive. “The window was broken… by zombies.” Works perfectly. For the full formal picture, Cambridge Dictionary’s grammar page on passive forms lists every tense in one table.

One last thing before your challenge: the passive is much easier once the tiny words around it behave. If a, an and the still trip you up, our guide to articles in English will sort them out in about ten minutes.

Now, your challenge. Look around the room you’re sitting in, pick one thing — a chair, a phone, a cup of tea — and tell us about it in the passive voice: “This chair was made in Sialkot.” “My phone was bought second-hand.” Write your sentence in the comments below. We read every single one, and the funniest answers usually come from the quietest readers — so don’t be shy!