Passive voice

In an active sentence, the subject performs the action: the doer comes first, then the verb, then the receiver. The passive reverses the spotlight — the receiver of the action becomes the subject, the verb changes to be + past participle, and the doer either disappears or moves to the end after 'by'.

Both versions describe the same event; what changes is the focus. Choose the active when the doer is the story, and the passive when the action or its receiver matters more than who performed it.

• The city council approved the new cycling lanes.(active — focus on the council)
• The new cycling lanes were approved last week.(passive — focus on the lanes; the doer is unstated)
• The new cycling lanes approved last week.(missing 'were' — the passive always needs be + past participle)

Use the passive when the doer is unknown, obvious from context, or simply less important than the action. It also keeps the topic of a paragraph in subject position, which makes formal and academic writing flow more smoothly.

News reports, scientific writing and official notices lean on the passive constantly, because processes and outcomes matter more there than individual actors.

• My scooter was stolen outside the library.(the thief is unknown)
• Two suspects were arrested at the border.(obviously by the police — no need to say it)
• Portuguese is spoken by people in Brazil.(grammatical but clumsy — the agent adds nothing: Portuguese is spoken in Brazil)

Add 'by + agent' only when the doer is genuinely informative — new, surprising or important information. If the agent is vague (somebody, people, they) or predictable, leave it out; empty agents are the fastest way to make a passive sound unnatural.

• This mural was painted by a teenager from Medellín.(the agent is the interesting part)
• The novel was translated into forty languages.(translators unknown or unimportant — no agent needed)
• The window was broken by somebody.('by somebody' adds nothing — drop it)

English reports general beliefs impersonally with two patterns. The first uses a dummy subject: It is said/believed/thought/claimed + that-clause. The second promotes the topic to subject: subject + be + said/thought/reported + to-infinitive (or to have + participle for past claims).

These distancing passives let a writer present a view without owning or sourcing it — essential hedging in academic style, and named explicitly in Band 7–8 grammar descriptions of flexible, wide-ranging structures.

• It is often claimed that remote work weakens team culture.(distances the writer from the claim)
• The company is reported to have laid off a third of its staff.(be + reported + to have + participle for past claims)
• Green tea is believed to improve concentration.
• It is believing that the climate is changing.(the reporting verb must be a past participle → It is believed that…)

Process diagrams — how chocolate is made, how bricks are manufactured, how water is recycled — describe stages where no individual doer matters, so the conventional answer is written almost entirely in the present simple passive, linked by sequencers such as first, next, after that and finally.

Vary the pattern with a perfect passive to show one stage completed before another begins, and with a modal passive for requirements.

• First, the cocoa beans are harvested and left to ferment.(present simple passive + sequencer)
• The mixture is then heated to 80°C before it is poured into moulds.
• Once the bottles have been filled, they are transported to regional warehouses.(perfect passive marks a completed stage)

Only transitive verbs — verbs with an object — can be made passive, because the passive works by promoting that object. Intransitive verbs such as happen, occur, arrive, die, rise and fall have no object to promote, so forms like 'was happened' are impossible.

A few transitive verbs also resist the passive for meaning reasons: have (possession), lack, resemble and suit stay active.

• The accident was happened near the toll gate.('happen' is intransitive → The accident happened near the toll gate)
• She was arrived late to the seminar.(→ She arrived late to the seminar)
• Prices rose sharply in March.('rise' has no passive — the active is the only option)