Choose active voice to show who acts and passive voice to emphasize what receives the action. You’ll learn to recognize both, rewrite without changing meaning, and keep passive wording when it fits.
What are active and passive voice?
Purdue OWL defines the difference through the subject’s role: an active subject performs the action; a passive subject receives it. In “The editor corrected the sentence,” the editor is both the subject and the actor. The sentence is the object, receiving the correction.
Change that to “The sentence was corrected by the editor,” and the sentence becomes the subject. The actor hasn’t changed. Only the way you present the action has.
The typical passive pattern is a form of be plus a past participle: is corrected, was written, or were chosen. APA Style describes this construction. Some passives use get instead, as in “The window got broken.” Start with who acts and who receives, rather than memorizing a list of verbs.
How to spot passive voice and distinguish it from tense and mood
To check whether a sentence is active or passive, use the subject-and-action test below. Merriam-Webster recommends asking whether the doer is the sentence’s subject.
“She is running” is active: she performs the action. “The report was reviewed” is passive: the report receives the review. The word is or was alone doesn’t settle the question.
You don’t need a by-phrase for a passive sentence. Cambridge Dictionary explains that the actor can be omitted. In grammar, active vs passive describes voice: the participants’ roles. Tense concerns time, and mood concerns whether you present something as a statement, command, or other kind of expression.
- Find the subject: who or what is the sentence about?
- Identify the action: what happens?
- Ask whether the subject performs that action or receives it.
Voice, tense, and mood answer different questions
| Term | Question | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Voice | Who acts or receives? | We checked it. |
| Tense | When does it happen? | We checked it yesterday. |
| Mood | How is it presented? | Check it. |
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Writing Active vs Passive Voice: When Each Works Best
Choose active wording when naming the actor helps your reader understand responsibility. “We missed the deadline” is more direct than “The deadline was missed.” Purdue OWL recommends active voice for clearer, less wordy sentences.
Keep the passive when the doer is unknown or unimportant, or when the reader already knows who acted. “My bike was stolen” puts the useful information first. You don’t need to invent a thief’s identity.
In scientific writing, APA Style permits both voices. It recommends passive wording when the recipient matters more, such as an experimental setup. “The samples were chilled” focuses on the procedure; “We chilled the samples” highlights the researchers. A methods section doesn’t automatically require passive wording.
Choose the focus your reader needs. If responsibility matters, name who acted. If you’re explaining a procedure and the researcher’s identity adds nothing, put the samples or process first.
Active vs passive voice in scientific writing
| Voice | Example | Focus |
|---|---|---|
| Active | We chilled the samples. | Emphasizes researchers |
| Passive | The samples were chilled. | Emphasizes procedure |
How to change active vs passive voice sentences
If the sentence doesn’t name who acted, check the surrounding text. Keeping the passive is better than inventing responsibility just to make a sentence active.
Practice with a known actor: rewrite “The letter was signed by the manager.” The answer is “The manager signed the letter.” The manager becomes the subject, and the action stays in the past.
For alternative sentence structures, Blurwrite’s paraphrasing tool can rephrase a single sentence. Compare the versions for emphasis, tense, and meaning before choosing one.
- Identify the recipient and actor. In “The report has been reviewed by us,” the report receives the review; we perform it.
- Make the actor the subject. Move we to the beginning.
- Revise the verb while keeping tense, ongoing or completed action, agreement, and meaning: “We have reviewed the report.”
A passive voice vs active voice example, plus four more pairs
Read across each row to see the same action from a different starting point. In the first pair, cook is the actor and rice is the recipient. The passive version names both.
Other rows omit the actor to show a useful choice, not just a mechanical conversion. In the deadline example, naming we makes responsibility clearer. In the stolen-bike example, the passive avoids the vague subject someone.
To change active wording to passive, move the object into the subject position and build the passive verb. “We review reports” becomes “Reports are reviewed by us.” Ordinary passive constructions need a verb that takes an object. You can’t make “She arrived” passive this way.
The pairs cover present, past, and future forms. Notice that will publish becomes will be published, not was published. Use the table as a reference for the practice worksheet below.
Examples of active voice vs passive voice
| Context | Active | Passive |
|---|---|---|
| Everyday action | The cook boils rice. | Rice is boiled by the cook. |
| Accountability | We missed the deadline. | The deadline was missed. |
| Unknown actor | Someone stole my bike. | My bike was stolen. |
| Scientific method | We chilled the samples. | The samples were chilled. |
| Recipient emphasis | We will publish the report. | The report will be published. |
Common mistakes when choosing a voice
Don’t treat every be verb as passive, every passive as incorrect, or every missing by-phrase as an error. “The door is closed” can describe a state; “The door was closed by the guard” clearly describes an action.
Keep tense and meaning intact, and don’t invent an actor. The actor is also called the agent. The recipient receives the action; an auxiliary verb helps form the verb phrase; a past participle is a form such as written. A transitive verb takes an object.
After rewriting, use Blurwrite’s free grammar checker to check grammar, including agreement and verb forms. Each issue offers a fix you can apply or ignore.
Active and passive voice examples with answers
Use these exercises as a short worksheet or quiz on active vs passive voice. Try each item before reading its answer. One rewards keeping the passive rather than changing it.
- Identify the voice: “The students are discussing the article.” Answer: active. The students perform the action, even though the verb phrase contains are.
- Rewrite with the known actor: “The application was approved by the committee.” Answer: “The committee approved the application.” The committee becomes the subject, and the past tense stays intact.
- Decide whether to revise: “My wallet was stolen,” with no information about the thief. Answer: keep the passive. It reports what happened without assigning responsibility to an unknown person.
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Questions about this article
What are five examples of active voice?
“The cook boils rice,” “We missed the deadline,” “Someone stole my bike,” “We chilled the samples,” and “We will publish the report” are active sentences. Each subject performs the action. Compare these active and passive examples in the table above: the passive versions put the recipient first.
What are five rules for active and passive voice, with examples?
Use these checks: identify the subject, identify the action, decide who performs it, check the verb form, and preserve meaning when rewriting. In “We reviewed the report,” we perform the action. In “The report was reviewed,” the report receives it. Both sentences describe the same action from different starting points.
How can you tell whether a sentence is active or passive?
Ask whether the subject performs or receives the action. “The teacher reviewed my essay” is active because the teacher does the reviewing. “My essay was reviewed” is passive because the essay receives that action. A form of be helps you recognize many passives, but you still need to check the subject’s role.
What is the passive voice of “I love you”?
The passive version is “You are loved by me.” You becomes the subject, love becomes are loved, and I becomes me after by. The meaning stays the same, but the wording sounds less natural for an ordinary personal statement. Here, I’d keep the active version.
When should you use active vs passive voice?
Use active voice when readers need to know who acts or takes responsibility. Keep passive voice when the doer is unknown, unimportant, or already understood, or when the recipient deserves attention. For example, “My bike was stolen” reports the event clearly without pretending you know who stole it.
How do you change a passive sentence to active voice?
Make the actor the subject, then adjust the verb and place the recipient after it. “The report was reviewed by us” becomes “We reviewed the report.” Keep the original time and meaning. If the sentence doesn’t identify the actor, use context to find it rather than guessing.
