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15.1 Active and Passive Voice

Active and Passive Voice
Active: A guard locked the doors.
Passive: The doors were locked by a guard.

1. In the active voice, the subject is the Active: Scientists discovered a lost city.
agent or doer. It performs the action of the Subject/Agent Object/Receiver
verb. The object is the receiver of the action
of the verb.
In the passive voice, the subject is the Passive: A lost city was discovered by scientists.
receiver of the action of the verb.
Subject/Receiver
2. A sentence in the passive voice has a form Oranges are grown in Florida.
of be (not) + the past participle of a verb. The lost objects haven’t been found.
Coal was used to heat buildings.
3. Only transitive verbs (verbs that can be They saw bears at the camp today
followed by a direct object in the active Bears were seen at the camp today.
voice) can occur in the passive voice.*
Intransitive verbs (verbs that are not ✓ Our taxi arrived early.
followed by a direct object in the active ✗ Our taxi was arrived early.
voice) cannot be used in the passive voice.
4. Sometimes by + the agent comes at the A lost city was discovered by scientists.
end of a passive sentence.

*See Chart 14.1 on page 374 for information on transitive verbs.

4 Write A if the underlined verb form is active, and P if it is passive.
P 1. Moche society around San José de Moro was ruled by women.

2. Interesting objects were discovered in the tomb. REAL ENGLISH
Use the passive voice to emphasize
3. Archaeologists found a silver cup.
what happened rather than who or
what performed the action.
4. The priestess was buried in a special way.
A cup was found on the ground.
5. She wore a simple necklace of local stones. The plans weren’t understood.

6. Several discoveries were made in Peru.

7. Today’s lecture on Moche society was canceled.

8. The discovery of the priestess has changed the way we think about the Moche.

9. Online videos about archaeology are watched by a lot of people.

10. Major new discoveries will be reported in the news.

398 PASSIVE VOICE AND PARTICIPIAL ADJECTIVES
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