what is a passive voice and how do we use it?

Answer 1

The first two posters are right on about what passive tense is. I would like to add that, at least in professional writing, one of the problems with passive voice is that you can hide the subject. For instance, if you say "Sales targets were not met this year" instead of "We did not meet sales targets this year" it hides the fact that "we" failed.

I would also like to correct an erroneous assumption about scientific writing, that we lack writing style. While passive voice is poor form in most circumstances, it makes sense to use in scientific writing. If we didn't use passive voice, every sentence in a paper would begin with "the researcher." "The researcher prepared an SDS gel... The researcher analyzed the differences using the software... The researcher found that the protease was inactive... etc." It would be very tiresome to read a paper like that, especially because the emphasis is not on WHO did the research, but about WHAT was done in the research.

Answer 2

Passive voice is a way of moving the subject and object and switching places. It is a style of writing, and considered bad usage in modern English writing (you should try for as few of these as possible) Here are some examples: (S - Subject / P - Predicate / O - Object)

Active: The dog bit me Passive: I was bitten by the dog
S P O O P S

Active: AJ Contractors built the Office Tower
S P O
Passive: The Office Tower was built by AJ Contractors
O P S

You can use it to vary sentence structure, but don't do it too often. It is a way to emphasize the object of a sentence.

You form it by making what would be the Object in Active Voice the subject, changing the verb, then "by + subject".

Try Wikipedia or another grammar handbook

Answer 3

The other two posters have it.

People in the humanities generally frown upon passive voice because the subject occurs AFTER the verb, which makes the subject seem less active and adds wordiness. When I was first tackling passive voice, I looked to a variation of the verb "to be" in front of another verb as a red flag.

Passive voice is used by people in the sciences (there's that passive voice ! "is used") because sometimes they aren't sure what the active agent or subject is... You can find a lot of passive voice in science textbooks. They seem to be less concerned with writing style, so it's not an issue for those science-types.

Answer 4

A passive voice in writing is when the subject is not doing the action, they are the target of the action. They are not the be-er or the do-er.

For example:
Active voice is: The cat ate the mouse.

Passive: The mouse was eaten by the cat.

Generally, it's said to be in poor writing form to use passive voice. It's less efficient and effective in writing.

Answer 5

I assume that the question has to do with grammar. Passive voice has a subject who has action done to him/her/it.
Example - The goal was met in the sales department.
The subject, goal, was acted upon, rather than acting.
Passive voice is usually not considered preferable in sentence styles. Active voice is more interesting to read.
Example - The sales department met its goal.

Answer 6

If the subject does the action that the verb describs, the verb is active voice.
For example:
The boy read the book.
The verb "read" is active voice.

If the subject is the TARGET of the the verb's action, the verb is passive voice.
For example:
The book was read by the boy.
The verb "was read" is passive voice.