The Grammaring Guide to English Grammar with Exercises

Form: passive voice

BE + PAST PARTICIPLE

The passive is formed by making the object of the active sentence the subject of the new sentence and using the appropriate form of be + the past participle form of the verb. Be is in the same tense as the verb in the active sentence.

Active sentence:

SUBJECT + VERB + OBJECT

Alexander Fleming

discovered

penicillin in 1928.

Passive sentence:

SUBJECT + BE + PAST PARTICIPLE (+ AGENT)

Penicillin

was discovered

by Alexander Fleming in 1928.

Passive forms

The following list shows examples of passive forms in different tenses and modal constructions. The corresponding active sentences are given in parentheses:

Present simple The book is published. (They publish the book.)

Present continuous The book is being published. (They are publishing the book.)

Present perfect The book has been published. (They have published the book.)

Past simple The book was published. (They published the book.)

Past continuous The book was being published. (They were publishing the book.)

Past perfect The book had been published. (They had published the book.)

Future simple The book will be published. (They will publish the book.)

Future continuous The book will be being published. (They will be publishing the book.)

Future perfect The book will have been published. (They will have published the book.)

Modal simple The book is going to be published. (They are going to publish the book.)

Modal simple The book can be published. (They can publish the book.)

Modal continuous The book might be being published. (They might be publishing the book.)

Modal perfect The book should have been published. (They should have published the book.)

Perfect continuous forms are also possible in the passive voice; however, they are less common:

His novels

have been being published

since the 1960s.

(They

have been publishing

his novels since the 1960s.)

His novels

might have been being published

at that time.

(They

might have been publishing

his novels at that time.)

Questions and negatives are formed the same way as in active sentences:

Was

the book

published

?

Will

the book

be published

?

The book

hasn't been published

.

The book

shouldn't have been published

.

In the case of verb + preposition, the preposition comes after the verb in the passive sentence:

My house

was broken into

last week.

(Someone

broke into

my house last week.)

He

is

often

laughed at

.

(People often

laugh at

him.)

The ship

has been lost sight of

.

(They

have lost sight of

the ship.)

Infinitives, gerunds and participles can also have passive forms:

Josh always needs

to be told

what to do.

(Other people always need to tell Josh what to do.)

I hate

being lied to

.

(I hate people lying to me.)

Authorities refused to reveal any information about the case

being investigated

.

(Authorities refused to reveal any information about the case which they were investigating.)

Quotes:

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. - Albert Einstein

Lost time is never found again. - Benjamin Franklin

I had been told that the training procedure with cats was difficult. It's not. Mine had me trained in two days. - Bill Dana

To be wronged is nothing unless you continue to remember it. - Confucius

People are not disturbed by things, but by the view they take of them. - Epictetus

If the Romans had been obliged to learn Latin, they would never have found time to conquer the world. - Heinrich Heine

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished. - Lao Tse

Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood. - Marie Curie

Some things have to be believed to be seen. - Ralph Hodgson

You live longer once you realize that any time spent being unhappy is wasted. - Ruth E. Renkl

Related topics:

The passive with GET

The forms of the infinitive

The forms of the gerund

The forms of the participle

Subject-auxiliary inversion in questions

Appendix: irregular verb forms