Passive Voice

Sometimes you say things like, "My bike was stolen," or, "The boy was given a gift." But who stole my bike? Who gave the boy a gift? You aren’t sure. That’s why you use the passive voice, which emphasizes the person or thing an action was done to, not the one who did the action.

Passive voice is normally formed with to be + a past participle, as in, "Chris was hired yesterday." You can use the passive voice in any tense by changing the form of 'to be.' For instance, you can say, "My cookie was eaten" (past tense) or, "My cookie is being eaten" (present progressive tense).

When you want to include the one who performed the action in a passive voice sentence, you use the word 'by' after the verb. For instance, "Danny will be picked up by his mother today."

Sometimes, the verb 'to get' is used instead of 'to be,' as in "My sister got sick last night."