Page 4 - Lesson Notes

Passive voice

A sentence is in the passive voice, on the other hand, when the subject is acted on

by the verb. The passive voice is always constructed with a conjugated form of to

be plus the verb’s past participle. Doing this usually generates a preposition as well.

That sounds much more complicated than it is—passive voice is actually quite easy

to detect. For these examples of passive voice, we will transform the three active

sentences above to illustrate the difference.

Passive voice examples

Bananas are adored by monkeys.

The money was counted by the cashier.

The squirrel was chased by the dog.

Let’s take a closer look at the first pair of sentences, ―Monkeys adore bananas‖ and

―Bananas are adored by monkeys.‖ The active sentence consists

of monkeys (subject) + adore (verb) + bananas (object). The passive sentence

consists of bananas (object) + are adored (a form of to be plus the past

participle adored) + by (preposition) + monkeys (subject). Making the sentence

passive flipped the structure and necessitated the preposition by. In fact, all three of

the transformed sentences above required the addition of by.