There are three main reasons for choosing the passive over the active voice. In this example, ‘was’ is the auxilliary verb, and ‘approved’ is the past participle. Note that the tense (past, present, future) of the auxilliary verb is not relevant. past participles are verbs that end in ‘ed’ or ‘en’, although irregular verbs have no pattern to help recognise the past participle.auxiliary verbs are usually a form of the verb ‘to be’ (am, are, is, was, were, been, being).The passive voice uses an auxiliary (helper) verb with a past participle. But if you can add the phrase ‘by the agent’ after the verb, the voice is passive. In this example, the agent isn’t mentioned. In the passive voice, the agent appears after the verb: verb > agentĮxample: ‘The program was approved by the committee’ (or ‘The program was approved’). Here, the verb is ‘approved’ and the agent is ‘the committee’. In the active voice, the agent appears before the verb: agent > verbĮxample: ‘The committee approved the program’ (or ‘The committee approved’). In formal grammar, the agent is known as the ‘subject’, but I find this often confuses people. Note the position of the agent (a person, group or thing) doing the verb.

There may be more than one, so you’ll need to check the others too Find the verb (action, doing word) in your sentence.You can identify the verb voice from the structure of the sentence, or if you’re more familiar with grammar, by the use of certain verb forms.

Whats an active voice