How to Change Into Passive Voice

Changing a sentence from the active voice to the passive voice is a simple procedure. Active-voice sentences are made up of a subject, verb and direct object. When changing a sentence to the passive voice, the direct object becomes the subject of the sentence. Passive voice is generally frowned upon as being indirect and difficult to decipher, but it can be used to give writing a bit of variation.

Instructions

1. Identify the subject, verb and direct object in the active-voice sentence. For example, in the sentence "The dog jumped the fence," "dog" is the subject, "jumped" is the verb and "fence" is the direct object.

2. Move the direct object to the subject position in the sentence and add the logical form of "be" to the verb to make the sentence flow. Change the tense of the verb, if necessary. The example sentence would now read, "The fence was jumped."

3. Use the preposition "by" to join the former subject of the sentence to the end of the passive-voice sentence: "The fence was jumped by the dog."

References

• Voice: Active and Passive

Resources

• Read this Article in Spanish