Changing Passive Voice to Active Voice.

Changing Passive Voice to Active Voice.

While changing Passive Voice into Active Voice, we must keep in mind all the rules of the Active Voice in the reverse order. We come across sentences in the Passive Voice without subject or agent. In this case, supply the appropriate subject.
To decide whether the given passive voice sentence is in passive voice, any one of the following constructions should be present.

·         1. is, was ,are, were, am + past participle

·         2. be + past participle

·         3. being + past participle

·         4. been + past participle

·         5. Let ...be + past participle

Changing Passive Voice to Active Voice.

Passive Voice	Active Voice
The thief was finally arrested	The police finally arrested the thief
We were taught grammar	The teacher taught us grammar
My purse has been stolen	Somebody has stolen my purse
The patients were looked after	The doctor looked after the patients

Passive voice / Impersonal passive

Differences between passive voice with by phrase and impersonal passive:

Compare these two sentence:

·         Last year, the Green-India scheme was announced by the Government.

·         Rare plants are found in Silent Valley.

In the first sentence, the doer/agent is explicitly mentioned because the doer is important in that sentence. But in the second sentence it is not so, because either the agent or doer of the action is too obvious or unknown.

The passive construction is quite common in scientific / technical / business writing. In these types of objective writing the emphasis is usually on the action or process or thing that is described. So the ‘by’ phrase is generally omitted in these writings. It is called Impersonal Passive.

·         They say that might is right.
It is said that might is right.

·         One finds mosquitoes everywhere.
Mosquitoes are found everywhere.

·         He gave us a cheque.
A cheque was given to us.

Related page

General rules for active voice and passive voice

What Is Voice? What are the Types of Voice?

What Is the Active Voice and Passive Voice?

Active and passive voice Rule with tenses,

Active and passive voice with Imperative Sentences

Active and passive voice Rule with modals

Active and Passive Voice rules - Simple Present tense

Active and Passive Voice – Present Continuous Tense

Active and Passive Voice rules – Present Perfect Tense

Active and Passive Voice rules – Past Indefinite Tense

Active and Passive Voice rules – Past continuous tense

Active and Passive Voice rules – Past perfect tense

Active and Passive Voice rules - Simple future tense

Active and Passive Voice rules Future perfect Tense

How to convert active voice sentence

How to form passive forms of verbs?

Rules for changing Active Voice into Passive Voice:

Changing Passive Voice to Active Voice.