WHAT IS ACTIVE AND PASSIVE VOICE

What are active and passive voice? It is very simple and easy to understand if you follow the rules of English grammar. There is no rocket science to understand about active and passive voice. You can also understand it. Here in this article, we will learn about it. How to use them? When they use and where they will be used in different sentences. There are structural differences between active and passive voice. You have to just understand some rules about it. It will be obligatory to have some know-how about English tense before going forward. Otherwise, it will be difficult for you to learn about it. As we have already published an article about English tense in detail you can find it here. The link is given below;

Indefinite Tense   (Present, Past, and Future forms)

Present continuous Tense  (Present, Past, and Future forms)

Present Perfect Tense (Present, Past, and Future forms)

Present Perfect Continuous Tense (Present, Past, and Future forms)

Now let s move forward to explain a clear difference between these two forms. There will be some rules to be followed to fully understand the active and passive tense. The detail is below.

WHAT IS VOICE

As far as voice is concern it is a form of the verb that shows whether the subject is doing something or something done to it. So, in English grammar, there are two voices.

• The first one is Active Voice
• and the Second one is passive Voice.
• Both voices have clear differences from each other. To fully understand each voice we will explain them separately.

ACTIVE VOICE

What is Active Voice in English grammar? As we explained above that there are two chances in each case either I (subject) will do something or something will be done upon the subject. Now if the subject does something it will be Active Voice. Examples are  Below

I play football (Active Voice)

He killed a lion (Active Voice)

You ate the mangoes (Active Voice)

In the above sentences, all subjects are doing something. If you analyze, you will understand that I, He, and You are subjects and they are doing something like play football, killed a lion, and ate the mangoes respectively. All these are called actives in a given sentence.

PASSIVE VOICE

Now we will analyze the Passive Voice of sentences. It is the opposite of Active Voice. In active voice sentences, the subject does something While in passive voice there will be done something upon the subject. The subject of the tense will not participate directly in these types of sentences. Let,s try to understand it through different examples.

Football is played by me (Passive Voice)

A lion is killed by him (Passive Voice)

mangoes are eaten by you (Passive Voice)

In these sentences, the subjects Football, Mangoes, lion are acted upon. They remain inactive or passive and their verbs are therefore said to be in the passive voices.

USE OF PASSIVE VOICE

In this section, we will try to explain the passive voice more deeply. Where and when it will be used? Let,s try to understand through examples.

His new cycle was stolen last night. (Passive Voice)

In the above example, we use passive voice. Because we do not know who has stolen our car. When there is no clue who did this work, we will use the passive voice.

MORE USE OF PASSIVE VOICE 

As we explain above there are different circumstances when we can use it effectively. Among them, other uses of this passive voice are here in this example. 

We also use the passive when we are not interested in who or what does something. Follow the example below

1. The actor is unknown and we do not know about it:

   The motorcycle was stolen last night. [We don’t know who made them.]

2. The actor is irrelevant in specific sentences

   The factory was painted during the war. [We are unknown who is painting it.]

3. When you do not know who is responsible

   The mistake is made.

4. When You talk about a general truth

   Rules are made to be broken. [By whomever, whenever.].:

In the above example, we do not know how invites peter.  So, simply we will use the passive voice instead of the active voice. If you have any misconceptions about it, you can read the above examples again and again.

CONCLUSION

In the above discussion, we learn about active and passive voices. We learn that we use passive for the subject when something is done upon it. We also use the passive voice when we do not know clearly about the subject. While when the subject does something it will be the use of active voice. So hope your confusion about the active and passive sentences is now clear. Do not use active voice in place of passive voice. Try to understand the difference between them. In the next lecture, we will explain the difference between Active and passive voice sentences such as Present, Past, and Future form.