The passive voice is often used when reporting a news story. Write a short news article (based on real or made-up events) that contains at least five sentences in the passive voice.

Passive voice is a sentence structure in which the subject of the sentence receives the action of the verb. (This is a flip of active voices structure in which the subject performs the action of the verb).

The passive voice means the subject is not performing the action of the verb (actively), but rather, is passively having an action done on them. Now that you know what passive voice is, you can start …

The passive voice of a verb always consists of a form of the helping verb be plus the past tense of the main verb: was told, are examined, has been broken. Although sometimes appropriate, passive …

In the passive voice, the subject of the sentence is neither a do-er or a be-er, but is acted upon by some other agent or by something unnamed (The new policy was approved).

Although passive voice is rarely effective, it is used when emphasis is placed upon the receiver of the action: Effective passive voice: The robbery victim was identified by police.

Use this sheet to practice identifying and correcting passive voice. Learn more about how to find and rewrite passive sentences by reviewing the Writing in the Active Voice resource.