Changing Active Voice to Passive Voice

In the active voice the subject does the action. In the passive voice the subject receives it.

The three steps

• Make the object of the active sentence the new subject.
• Use the correct form of be (matching the tense of the active verb) + the past participle (V3).
• Add by + the old subject, if it matters. Leave it out when the doer is unknown or obvious.

Only verbs with an object (transitive verbs) can be made passive. "She sleeps" has no passive.

The form of "be" in each tense

• Present simple: is/am/are + V3 → Letters are written.
• Present continuous: is/are being + V3 → A house is being built.
• Present perfect: has/have been + V3 → The work has been done.
• Past simple: was/were + V3 → The match was won.
• Past continuous: was/were being + V3 → The car was being repaired.
• Past perfect: had been + V3 → The thief had been caught.
• Future simple: will be + V3 → The result will be announced.
• Future perfect: will have been + V3 → The bridge will have been completed.
• Modals: modal + be + V3 → This must be done today.

The perfect continuous tenses are usually not used in the passive.

Pronoun changes

Subject pronouns become object pronouns after by: I → me, we → us, he → him, she → her, they → them.

Questions

Imperatives

Use let + object + be + V3, or rewrite with you are requested/ordered.

When to use the passive

When the action matters more than the doer, or the doer is unknown: Urdu is spoken in Pakistan. My bicycle has been stolen.