Passive Voice occurs when the subject of the sentence is unclear or the sentence uses a "to be" verb phrase. There are two basic ways to determine passive voice:
Identify the verb. Is it a "to be" ("can be seen," "has been said," etc.) phrase?
Who or what is doing the action of the verb? If you don't know or it is unclear, you probably are dealing with Passive Voice.
Sometimes passive voice is easy to spot. In the sentece, "I updated it," the subject is not clearly named. What did you update? Was it your computer file? Was it your passport or driver's license? Was it your club membership? That's one of the forms that passive voice takes.
To correct Passive Voice:
Simply make the subject active, and remove the "to be" verb phrase.
Example:
Passive Voice: Insanity was used in The Woman Warrior to show the strain the woman moving from China to the United States of America.
Active Voice: In The Woman Warrior Maxine Hong Kingston uses insanity to show the strain the woman moving from China to the United States of America experienced.
Active Voice:
In sentences written in active voice, the subject performs the action expressed by the verb. That is the essence of active voice – the subject acts (and the subject is clearly named).
Examples (subject is underlined and verbs are in italics):
The catscratched me.
The professoradministered the exam.
Our workgroupmet in the library.
The professors have conducted surveys of the student body.
Passive Voice
In sentences written in passive voice, the subject receives the action expressed by the verb. The key phrase “to be” or “by the” may have been omitted, which makes it unclear who receives the action.
Examples (subject is underlined, verbs are in italics, and the phrase is in bold):
I was scratchedby thecat.
The exam will be administeredby theprofessor.
Our workgroupmet in the library.
Surveys of the student body have beenconducted by professors.
Additional examples are found in my passive voice worksheets and the "to be" phrases are identified using boldface in Passive Worksheet #1 and Passive Worksheet #2.
Students are encouraged to use the worksheets and develop their skills in identifying the key verb phrase.
In passive voice, the verb phrase will include a form of "be", such as:
am
is
was
were
are
been
Finding a "be-verb" in a sentence does not always denote passive voice. As was shown in the examples above, another indication is the presence of a "by the" phrase after the verb. Sometimes, as in the last example sentence, the "the" in the "by the" phrase is missing. Note that the agent that is acting is the object of the preposition.