Question

What are active and passive voice. Define with examples.​

Answer 1

Answer:

Active voice

When the subject of a sentence performs the verb’s action, we say that the sentence is in the active voice. Sentences in the active voice have a strong, direct, and clear tone. Here are some short and straightforward examples of active voice.

Active voice examples:

• Monkeys adore bananas.
• The cashier counted the money.
• The dog chased the squirrel.

>>>All three sentences have a basic active voice construction: subject, verb, and object. The subject monkey performs the action described by adore. The subject the cashier performs the action described by counted. The subject the dog performs the action described by chased. The subjects are doing, doing, doing—they take action in their sentences. The active voice reminds us of the popular Nike slogan, “Just Do It.”

Passive voice

A sentence is in the passive voice, on the other hand, when the subject is acted on by the verb. The passive voice is always constructed with a conjugated form of to be plus the verb’s past participle. Doing this usually generates a preposition as well. That sounds much more complicated than it is—passive voice is actually quite easy to detect. For these examples of passive voice, we will transform the three active sentences above to illustrate the difference.

Passive voice examples

• Bananas are adored by monkeys.
• The money was counted by the cashier.
• The squirrel was chased by the dog.

>>>>Let’s take a closer look at the first pair of sentences, “Monkeys adore bananas” and “Bananas are adored by monkeys.” The active sentence consists of monkeys (subject) + adore (verb) + bananas (object). The passive sentence consists of bananas (object) + are adored (a form of to be plus the past participle adored) + by (preposition) + monkeys (subject). Making the sentence passive flipped the structure and necessitated the preposition by. In fact, all three of the transformed sentences above required the addition of by.

Answer 2

At the most basic level, the active voice emphasizes the person or agent who performs an action, in short, the “actor.” The passive voice emphasizes the recipient of the action or sometimes the action itself.

Example 1:

Active: “The dog chased the ball.”
Passive: “The ball was chased by the dog.”
In this very simple sentence, the active voice is the better choice. It is more concise (shorter), more direct, and stronger. The passive voice, in this case, is unnecessarily wordy and clunky.

However, there are many examples where we either cannot or do not want to emphasize the actor, particularly if there is an element of mystery involved:

Example 2:

Passive: “My car was stolen on Sunday night.”
In this case, the speaker may not/does not know who stole her car, and this use of the passive is perfectly appropriate.

The active alternative would be “Someone stole my car on Sunday night.” But this is a case where the speaker probably wants to emphasize the action itself rather than the perpetrator. She wants to emphasize that something bad happened to her.

You’ll notice something about the two passive examples above: both use a form of the verb “to be” – in this case, the past form “was” (“was chased,” “was stolen”).

This is called a “helping” or “auxiliary” verb because it helps to complete the sentence (you can’t say “My car stolen on Sunday night”). These verbs are not needed in active sentence constructions, which is one main reason why many people say that active sentences are stronger and more concise.