Active vs passive voice: 40 examples and when to use each

In the active voice, the subject of the sentence does the action: “The committee rejected the plan.” In the passive voice, the subject receives the action, and the doer moves into a by-phrase or disappears: “The plan was rejected (by the committee).” Active is the usual default, because it says who did what, often in fewer words. Passive is the better choice when the doer is unknown, unimportant or obvious, or when the receiver is what the paragraph is about.

Most verbs in the passive version drop the actor, and in a methods section that is often fine: the reader knows the researchers did the work, the procedure is the point, and some fields still expect it. The active version is shorter and makes clear that the authors did every step, coding included. The same omission misleads elsewhere. “Mistakes were made in the rollout” leaves out the one fact the reader wants, which is who made them.

Active and passive at a glance

How to spot the passive voice

A passive verb has two parts: a form of be (am, is, are, was, were, be, being, been) followed by a past participle (signed, written, stolen, built). In speech and informal writing, get can stand in for be: “He got fired” and “The car got towed” are passive too. Three checks settle almost every case:

1. Find be (or get) plus a past participle. was signed, is being repaired, has been lost, will be announced. Irregular participles count: was written, were thrown, had been sold.
2. Ask who did it. If the subject is not the doer, and the doer sits in a by-phrase or is missing, the verb is passive.
3. Try the zombies. Add “by zombies” after the verb. “The proofs were checked by zombies” is silly but grammatical, so the verb is passive. “The proofs were late by zombies” is nonsense, so it isn't.

When the participle is an adjective

Many past participles double as adjectives, and then was is just a linking verb, as in was empty. In “The shop was closed when we got there,” closed describes a state, like shut or empty. In “The shop was closed by the health inspector on Monday,” it names an event someone caused. Two checks tell them apart. An adjective accepts very or a verb like seemed: She was very tired; the shop seemed closed. A passive accepts a doer and a moment: The shop was closed by the inspector at noon. If only the adjective checks work, there is no passive verb to fix.

Passives also hide in participle phrases with no be in sight. Jane Austen's “a truth universally acknowledged” is a truth that is universally acknowledged, by nobody in particular.

Passive voice in every tense

The passive works in every tense, and only be changes. The past participle stays the same in every row.

Charles Darwin ends On the Origin of Species (1859) with two passives sharing one participle:

40 active and passive voice examples

Each pair shows one sentence in both voices, with a verdict on which to keep. The verdict depends on context, so treat it as a default, not a rule.

Everyday sentences

Work and business

Academic and science writing

News and public statements

Fiction

The fiction pairs show why novelists keep some passives: a passive can put the reader where the character is, unable to see who acted.

When the passive voice is right

William Strunk Jr.'s rule in The Elements of Style (1920 edition) is “Use the active voice,” but the same section calls the passive “frequently convenient and sometimes necessary.” George Orwell's version in “Politics and the English Language” (1946) is stricter: “Never use the passive where you can use the active.” The essay's own first sentence leans on an agentless passive. Five situations call for one:

• The doer is unknown. My bike was stolen. Writing “someone” adds a word and no information.
• The doer is obvious or doesn't matter. The suspect was arrested (by the police, who else). In a methods section the researcher is obvious too. APA style asks writers to use the active voice as much as they can but keeps the passive for when “it is more important to focus on the recipient of an action,” such as describing an experimental setup; the methodology example covers when a methods section can use the first person.
• The receiver is the topic. Strunk's own example: “The dramatists of the Restoration are little esteemed to-day” is the right form in a paragraph about the dramatists, and “Modern readers have little esteem for the dramatists of the Restoration” in one about modern readers. In his words, “The need of making a particular word the subject of the sentence will often, as in these examples, determine which voice is to be used.”
• A long doer belongs at the end. The prize was won by a nine-year-old from Tulsa who had entered on a dare. The active version opens with a ten-word subject.
• The rule is the actor. The federal government's plain language guidance calls passive voice “one of the biggest problems with government writing,” yet allows that when one action follows another as a matter of law, with no actor but the law itself, “a passive sentence may be the best method of expression.”

What is not passive voice

Two mix-ups cause most false alarms: calling any past tense passive, and calling any form of be passive. The federal plain language guidance puts the first one plainly: “Don't confuse passive voice with past tense.”

Some sentences can be read both ways. “The window was broken” can describe a state (it wasn't intact when we arrived) or an event (someone broke it). Only the event is a true passive, and, as with the shop above, a doer or a time makes it clear which you mean: “The window was broken by a ball at noon.”

Strunk's own examples show that the advice is broader than the passive. Under “Use the active voice” he gives four tame sentences to fix, and only one is passive: “The sound of a guitar somewhere in the house could be heard.” The others, such as “There were a great number of dead leaves lying on the ground,” are weak for other reasons. The fix is the same for all four: find the real actor and give it a verb, as in his “Dead leaves covered the ground.” Hidden doers are one of several things that hurt readability, not the only one.

How to change passive to active

1. Find the verb

   Mark be (or get) plus the past participle: was reviewed, have been sent.

2. Find the doer

   It's in the by-phrase (by the board) or missing. If it's missing, ask who did it. If nobody knows, the passive may be the honest choice.

3. Make the doer the subject

   Put the doer first, keep the tense, and move the old subject after the verb: The budget was reviewed by the board becomes The board reviewed the budget.

4. Check the paragraph, not just the sentence

   If the paragraph is about the budget, and the next sentence is about it too, the passive may have been right. Read the neighbors before you accept the change.

The methods paragraph at the top of this page shows the steps at work. Many passives also bury a verb in a noun (“a decision was reached”), so turning them active is the moment to pick a stronger verb; the strong verbs list has replacements for the weak ones.

Practice: active or passive?

Decide whether each sentence is passive. If it is, rewrite it in the active voice and decide which version you'd keep.

1. The results were posted online on Monday.
2. The meeting was long.
3. The bridge was being painted when the storm hit.
4. The ice melted overnight.
5. Mistakes were made.
6. She was tired of waiting.
7. The contract has been signed by both parties.
8. Dinner was burning in the oven.
9. Our flight got canceled.
10. The prize will be awarded at the gala.

Find the passives worth changing

In a long report or thesis chapter, the passives worth changing are the ones that leave the reader unsure who acted. Check each one against the five situations above: some of them belong.

You can ask the Strokes Assistant to list the sentences in a section where the doer is unclear. If you ask for active rewrites, give it the doers: when the actor isn't in your text, any name a rewrite adds is a guess.