Active and Passive Voice: Rules, Examples and When to Use Each

Every sentence with an object can be said two ways. In the active voice, the subject does the action: The chef cooks the meal. In the passive voice, the subject receives the action: The meal is cooked (by the chef).

Neither is "better". They put a different thing at the start of the sentence, and that changes what the sentence is about. This guide shows how to form the passive in every tense, the rules for changing active to passive, and — the part most guides skip — when the passive is the natural choice and when it just makes your writing heavy.

Active vs passive: the difference

In each passive sentence, the thing that was the object of the active sentence has moved to the front and become the subject. The person who did the action either disappears or comes at the end after by.

How to form the passive

be (in the right tense) + past participle

That's the whole rule. The verb be carries the tense; the main verb is always the past participle (made, written, sent, built, taken).

The passive in every tense

This table is the core of the "rules for active and passive voice". Read across: the active form on the left, the passive on the right, with be changing to match the tense.

The perfect continuous forms (has been being cleaned) are grammatically possible but so awkward that native speakers almost never use them — rephrase instead. For a refresher on the tenses themselves, see the English tenses chart.

Changing active to passive, step by step

1. Find the object of the active sentence. The police arrested two men.
2. Make it the subject. Two men …
3. Put be in the same tense as the active verb, agreeing with the new subject. Arrested is past simple, the subject is plural → were.
4. Add the past participle of the main verb. Two men were arrested …
5. Add by + the doer only if it matters. Here we know it's the police — it adds nothing. Two men were arrested.

Pronouns change form when they move: an active object pronoun becomes a subject pronoun (They invited us → We were invited), and a subject pronoun after by becomes an object pronoun (She wrote it → It was written by her).

When to use the passive

1. The doer is unknown

2. The doer is obvious or unimportant

3. The action or result matters more than the person

4. Processes, rules and formal writing

Instructions, scientific reports, news and official notices use the passive a lot, because the focus is on the process, not the people.

5. To keep the same topic across sentences

The paragraph is about the painting, so the painting stays the subject.

When the active is better

In everyday speech and most writing, the active voice is clearer and shorter. Use it when you know who did something and that person matters:

• A mistake was made by me. → I made a mistake.
• The meeting was attended by all the managers. → All the managers attended the meeting.

A useful test: if your sentence ends with by + a person and that person is important, the active is usually better. Passives without a doer can also hide responsibility — "Mistakes were made" is famous for exactly that reason.

Verbs that can't be passive

Only verbs with an object (transitive verbs) have a passive. Verbs like happen, arrive, die, sleep, fall, disappear, stay and come have no object, so they can't be passive:

• The accident was happened at night. → The accident happened at night.
• He was died in 1990. → He died in 1990.

Some verbs that describe states also sound wrong in the passive: have (= own), fit, suit, resemble, lack. A car is had by my sister isn't English.

Verbs with two objects

Verbs like give, send, show, offer, teach, tell and lend can have two objects, so they have two possible passives. The person is the more common subject:

Questions and negatives in the passive

Move be (or the first auxiliary) to the front for a question; add not after it for a negative.

The get-passive

In informal English, get can replace be, usually for something that happens unexpectedly or that the subject didn't want:

It's normal in conversation but too casual for formal writing.

Common mistakes

• Missing be: The house built in 1950. → The house was built in 1950.
• Past simple instead of the participle: The letter was wrote. → The letter was written.
• Be in the wrong tense: The report has finished. (if you mean someone finished it) → The report has been finished.
• Passive of a verb with no object: It was happened. → It happened.
• Unnecessary by: The thief was arrested by the police. → The thief was arrested.

Where it fits in your learning

The passive in the present and past simple is usually taught at A2–B1, and the full range (perfect, modal and continuous passives, get-passives) at B1–B2 — see CEFR levels explained. It also appears in reported statements like It is said that…; for reporting what someone said, see direct and indirect speech.

Exercise: active to passive

Change each sentence into the passive. Leave out the doer if it isn't needed. Answers are below.

1. Someone cleans the windows every week.
2. They are building a new hospital.
3. Shakespeare wrote Hamlet.
4. Somebody has eaten my sandwich.
5. The company will open three new stores.
6. They didn't invite us to the wedding.
7. You must wear a helmet.
8. Did they tell you the news?
9. A dog bit the postman.
10. They were painting the house when we arrived.