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The passive voice, basic information, what is it, when is it used, how is it conjugated?

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To understand the passive voice, we need to compare it to the active voice, and to be

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aware of the fact that the first element that we utter in a sentence is our focus of attention.

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So in a sentence such as Peter made a cake, an active voice sentence, the subject is the

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agent, the performer of the action, and it is our main focus, what we care about.

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That is followed by a verb, made, and an object, which is the person or thing that directly

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receives the action of the verb.

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It is a sentence such as this with a direct object that we can turn into the passive voice.

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On the contrary, in the passive voice, there is a change in the order of elements of our

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sentence.

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One of the first elements that we have is the person or the thing that receives the

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action of the verb, what was previously our object, but is now our main focus of attention.

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So in a cake was made by Peter, we care about the cake itself or the baking, not who actually

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baked it.

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That passive subject is followed by a passive verb, and then at the end of the sentence,

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the agent may be mentioned, but it's not necessary.

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If we choose to do so, we use preposition by.

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So when is it used?

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So since the point of the passive voice is to focus on the action and its consequences

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rather than the agent, it is used many times when the agent is unknown or obvious, such

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as in this sentence, somebody cleaned the room, or the cleaner cleaned the room is less

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likely to be used than the room was clean, since we know the room was cleaned by a person

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and that was probably a cleaner.

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It is used as well when we want deliberately to avoid the agent, when we intentionally

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want not to mention the agent, sometimes, for instance, a mistake was made is a sentence

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that has been used by many politicians in the past when we want to admit that something

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went wrong, but that they don't know who is to be blamed.

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They want to say that they were to blame for it.

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If you follow this link, you can see some of the examples in real life.

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So how is it formed?

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Let's take a sentence in the active voice, such as the postman delivers the mail.

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We need to change the order of elements.

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The first element to be used is our previous object, the receiver of the action, the mail.

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Then we change the verb into the passive voice.

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A passive voice verb has two elements.

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To begin with, the verb to be, conjugated in whichever tense we need to.

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So delivers is a present simple, so we need a present simple is.

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And then the participle of the verb, in this case, the lexical verb.

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The verb is to deliver, so we say delivered, and our passive voice verb is delivered.

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And finally, if we want to mention the agent, we use preposition by and place it at the

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end of the sentence by the postman.

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So our passive voice sentence would be, the mail is delivered by the postman.

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A few notes.

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So if by any chance our sentence in the active voice starts with no one or nobody, in the

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passive voice, it becomes a negative sentence, such as is the case here.

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No one turned the light would become the light was not turned on.

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Now, when we have a phrasal verb, when we have a verb with a preposition followed by

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a preposition in the active voice, that preposition remains behind the verb in the passive voice.

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So they talked about the issue becomes the issue was talked about.

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Let us have a look at some tenses in the passive voice.

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This is a chart with tenses in the active and the passive voice.

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As you can see, there are two elements in our passive voice tenses.

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To begin with, the verb to be conjugated, and then the participle.

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Let's take, for instance, the future simple.

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If I say I will do it in the active voice, then I need to conjugate the verb to be in

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the future simple.

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So my passive verb would start with will be instead of will do.

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And then finally, I use the participle done.

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So it becomes it will be done.

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Here you have some more complex tenses.

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Notice the fact that continuous tenses are not generally used in the passive voice.

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So that's all for now.

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I think that now you're ready to start practicing.