Active and Passive voice - verbs.

Hello guys !! Today we are dealing with active and passive voice! Do you know when do we use these two? Look, when we use active voice, we put more emphasis on the agent, that is to say, the person who carries out the action, for example: Sarah bought the honey. As we can see in this example, all the emphasis is on Sarah, the initiator of the action. If the object of the action (the honey) is the most important thing in the sentence, we change its position. How could we do that? Here we are, using passive voice: The honey was bought by Sarah.

We also use passive voice in order to remove someone's fault, for example, in a party you break a glass. Your friend says: the glass was broken. Although you were the person who break it, and it could we explicit if we add "by Sarah", in passive voice this situation is softer and you are not directly blamed.

I'm going to give you the basic tools in order to use active and passive voice.

Active voice: The subject of the sentence is the doer of the verb's action.

My uncle (subject) plays(verb) the guitar. (object) ->present

She (subject) tells (verb) the story. (object) ->present

The cat (subject) drunk (verb) the milk. (object) ->past

Passive voice: The subject of the sentence is the object in active voice. The position changes.

The guitar (object in active voice, subject is passive voice) is played (auxiliary verb + verb) by my uncle (prepositional phrase)

The story (object in active voice, subject is passive voice) is told (auxiliary verb + verb) by her (prepositional phrase)

The milk (object in active voice, subject is passive voice) was drunk (auxiliary verb + verb) by the cat. (prepositional phrase)

Formula: object of the active voice + verb be (present/past tense) + by something/someone.

TAKE INTO ACCOUNT:

• Subject / object and their positions
• prepositional phrase: by _________
• in passive voice, normally is used auxiliary verb (be) + lexical verb.

Now... a literary example, The Declaration of Independence of EEUU by Thomas Jefferson:

If you want more information about in which context you should use each case, here you have a very good explanation which may clarify all your doubts. This information is from the University of Toronto: http://www.writing.utoronto.ca/advice/style-and-editing/passive-voice

I hope you have all clear, please, ask if some doubts come to your mind! See you soon :)