What is the meaning of active and passive voice?

Answer 1

The Active voice is when the subject of a sentence performs the action:

eg The boy broke the window.

The Passive voice is when the subject of a sentence is acted upon:

eg The window was broken by the boy.

Understanding the Active and The Passive Voice

Who or what does the action? The subject always does the action in the active voice but does not perform the action in the passive voice!

The passive voice swaps the subject of a sentence in its active voice with the object of the same sentence by using any form of the auxiliary verb 'to be' along with the past participle of the main verb. This action causes the original subject of the sentence which heretofore had performed the action to be inactive and non dependent on the active verb and so it becomes passive. That is why it is called passive.

Example.

The sheep drank water from the trough. This sentence is active. Why? because the sheep performed the action. Sheep, by the way is both a singular and a plural noun .

The sheep (subject) drank (main verb) water (object noun) from the (preposition) trough (place noun).

Now let's make it passive:

The water was drunk from the trough by the sheep. This sentence is passive. Why? Because the water is the subject of interest. The water is more important to our story than the sheep.

The water (subject) was (past tense simple form of the auxiliary verb 'to be') drunk (past participle of the main verb) from the trough ( no change) by

(preposition) the sheep (object)..

You can see that the active voice is understood more clearly than the passive voice. It is therefore used mostly by writers and public speakers. However, we ourselves use the passive voice often without realizing it. In general the passive voice is employed for the purpose of avoiding over emphasis on anything personal. For example, 'The news is broadcast on the radio at 6pm everyday'. (This is passive) 'Everyday, the radio broadcasts the news at 6pm'. (This is active), but you can see that in this case and cases like this, the passive voice is clearer than the active voice. That is why it is important to know the right time to use it and this comes with practice.

Answer 2

In active voice the subject of the sentence does the acting, e.g., "The cook fried the egg." In passive voice the subject of the sentence is acted upon, e.g., "The egg was fried." Active voice is preferable unless the identity of the actor is unknown - e.g., we don't know who fried the egg - or unimportant.

Answer 3

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