For example, ‘Pupils are not allowed in the dining hall after 1:45 p.m. Most readers prefer sentence B, which is the active voice sentence. To create an authoritative or factual tone.The rules for using auxiliary verbs in passive voice sentences are different for each tense. Use the suitable helping or auxiliary verb (is/am/are/was, etc.). For example, ‘I had the feeling that I was being watched.’ - I don’t know who was watching me While conversion of Active voice sentence to Passive voice sentence, the pronoun used in the sentence also changes in the following manner.

Because we don't know or do not want to say who performed the action.We wish to suggest a structure for the salt of deoxyribose nucleic acid (D.N.A.). For example, the castle was built in 1066 - we are interested in the castle, not in who built it. opens in a new window Watson and Crick’s famous paper about the discovery of the structure of DNA, written in 1953, contains both active and passive sentences. A verb in such languages is usually in the active voice when the subject of the verb performs the action. It is the unmarked voice for clauses featuring a transitive verb in nominativeaccusative languages, including English and most other Indo-European languages. To show interest in the person or object that experiences an action rather than the person or object that performs the action. Active voice is a grammatical voice common in many of the world's languages.Reasons to use the passive voiceĪlthough the active voice is usually the preferred choice, there are sometimes good reasons to use the passive voice: Rewrite the sentence so that the subject in the 'by' phrase is closer to the beginning of the sentence.įor example:‘The exam was passed by the pupil’ would change to ‘The pupil passed the exam’. One way to avoid using the passive voice is to look for a ‘by’ phrase. Who scored the goal? Doesn’t the writer know? Converting sentences to active voice Passive sentences can cause confusion because they can be vague about who is responsible for the action. Active: The teacher collected the books.

Passive: The books were collected by the teacher. In addition, the active voice stresses that the actor (or grammatical subject) precedes the verb, again, putting emphasis on the subject.

In active voice sentences, the subject is. Using the active voice in a sentence often means less words are used than in the passive voice. The active voice is used to show that the subject of the sentence is active and is performing an action on an object.

Define active voice