In English, there are two voices--active and passive. If the subject of a sentence performs the action of the verb, the verb is said to be in the "active voice"; for example: I stopped. I bathed. The ...

Use the passive voice when you don’t know who is doing ... rather than focusing on who or what is doing the action. For example: Le bâtiment a été construit en 1990.

Try adding by zombies after the verb in your sentence. If it makes sense, congratulations! You’ve probably got yourself some passive voice. For example: Popular grammar guides have contributed ...

Conversely, a passive sentence has a subject that is the receiver of the action. In the following example sentences, the subject is underlined and the action is bolded. Sentence using active voice: ...

is the grammatical subject of the sentence.) To choose between active and passive voice, consider above all what you are discussing (your topic) and place it in the subject position. For example ...

Writing in the active voice makes the meaning clear while keeping sentences from becoming complicated and wordy. Sentences using passive voice are not necessarily wrong, just less effective than ...

One major function of the passive voice is ... To see how true this is, let's go back to the example of the active-voice sentence we used above: "Emilio hit Andres violently with a bat." ...