Even in casual speech and writing, it is usually the voice that comes most naturally to speakers and writers. In general, the active voice is the voice that is used much more often in academic and formal writing and speech. Our example sentence has a direct object ( a banana) that says what the monkey is eating. Unlike the passive voice, a sentence that uses the active voice can also have a direct object that identifies who or what is receiving the action of the verb. In this sentence, the subject ( the monkey) is the one doing the thing described by the verb ( eating). For example, the sentence The monkey is eating a banana is a sentence that uses the active voice. The active voice is the voice used when the subject is doing something rather than having something done to it. Arianna was chosen to be the leader of our club.Peter has been bitten by spiders on a regular basis.The survey is being completed by the entire school.Passive voice examplesĪll of the following examples demonstrate the passive voice being used in a variety of sentences. Read more in depth about the passive voice here. The phrase by Jeremy serves this purpose in our above example. In addition to this basic structure, the passive voice often uses a prepositional phrase beginning with the word by to identify who or what is performing an action to the subject. The verb be will be conjugated to adhere to subject-verb agreement and will be in the proper verb tense. When used in a sentence or clause, the passive voice uses a basic structure. In a manner of speaking, a sentence that uses the passive voice looks backwards because it seems as though the direct object (which typically receives an action) is the subject. Since this is the case, this sentence uses the passive voice. In this sentence, the subject is the receiver rather than the performer of the action. Instead, Jeremy is the one doing something he ate the sandwich. Reading the sentence, you know that the sandwich isn’t doing anything. In other words, the subject is having something done to it rather than doing something itself.Īs you probably know, the subject of this sentence is the sandwich. The passive voice is the voice used when a subject of a sentence or clause is acted on by the verb. So how do we know which voice to use? Are they really all that different? Before we lose our voice asking lots of good questions, it is time we learned about the two voices that we use in writing and speech in English. On the other hand, the passive voice tends to be more roundabout and appears in longer sentences like Lunch was eaten by us. The active voice tends to be more direct and appears in shorter sentences like We ate lunch. As it happens, verbs generally come in two different “voices.” They are the active voice and the passive voice. Verbs tell us what is happening or what someone or something is doing.

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