The Meaning of Passive Voice

Passive voice is a sentence that the object of

active sentence becomes the subject of the
passive sentence.
Example : She reads a book
A book is read by She
‘she’ as a subject in active voice becomes an
object in the passive voice.
 Sometimes a statement in passive is more polite
than active voice, as the following example shows:

Example : A mistake was made.

In this case, It focus on the fact that a mistake was
made, but it do not blame anyone
Use of the Passive Voice
We use the passive when:
we want to make the active object more important
we do not know the active subject

subject Verb Object

Give importance
to active object President By Lee Harvey
(President Kennedy Was killed Oswald
Kennedy)
Active subject
unknown My Wallet Has Been Stolen ?

Note that we always use by to introduce the passive object.

 Construction of the Passive Voice
Only transitive verb (those that take object) can
be transformed into passive construction.
Furthermore, active sentence containing certain
verb cannot be transformed into passive structure.

The structure of the passive voice is very simple:

subject + auxiliary verb (be) + V3 (past participle)
Look at these examples:
Auxiliary verb V3 (past participle)
Subject (to be)

Water Is Drunk By everyone

By this
100 people Are Employed
company

I Am Paid In euro

We Are not Paid In dollars

Are They paid In yen?

Active / Passive Overview
Active Passive

Simple Present Tanse Once a week, Tom cleans Once a week, the house is
the house. cleaned by Tom.

Present Continuous Tense Right now, Sarah is writing Right now, the letter is
the letter. being written by Sarah.

Present Perfect Many tourists have visited That castle has been
that castle. visited by many tourist.

Present Perfect Continuous Recently, John has been Recently, the work has
Tense doing the work. being done by John.

Simple Past Tense Sam repaired the car. The car was repaired by
Sam.
Conclusion
We use the passive voice to good effect in a
paragraph in which we wish to shift emphasis from
what was the object in a first sentence to what
becomes the subject in subsequent sentences.
The passive voice is especially helpful (and even
regarded as mandatory) in scientific or technical
writing or lab reports, where the actor is not really
important but the process or principle being
described is of ultimate importance.