The Difference between Active and Passive Voice in English Grammar

What is Voice?

In English grammar, voice describes the direction of an action. In most sentences, the subject performs the action on the object. That’s the active voice.

However, in the passive voice, the order is reversed. The object becomes the one performing the action, and the subject is the one the action happens to. In other words, the action flows from object to subject.

In the example above, in an active sentence, I (the subject) talked to the student. In the passive version, I (the subject) was talked to by the student.

If you like grammar terms,

• The subject doing the action is called the agent.
• The subject receiving the action is called the recipient.

Simply put, the key difference between active and passive voice is that the roles of agent and recipient are switched.

Active Voice Sentence

The active voice is the most common sentence type in English. In this construction, the subject acts as the agent, the one performing the action. The verb shows the action, and when needed, the object receives that action.

This relationship can appear in five sentence patterns:

• Subject-Verb (SV)
• Subject-Verb-Complement (SVC)
• Subject-Verb-Object (SVO)
• Subject-Verb-Object-Object (SVOO)
• Subject-Verb-Object-Complement (SVOC)

Examples of Active Voice Sentences

Let’s see some examples.

The committee postponed the meeting to discuss the unexpected financial crisis.

Here, the subject committee is the agent that performed the action postponed. The object is the meeting. Everything after the object (to discuss the unexpected financial crisis) is extra information. It adds detail but isn’t essential to the basic grammar of the sentence.

The teacher encouraged the students to present their research findings confidently.

In this sentence, the subject “the teacher” is the agent who performed the action “encouraged.” The object is “the students,” who receive the action. The phrase “to present their research findings confidently” gives more detail about what the students were encouraged to do.

Passive Voice Sentence

Unlike active voice, passive voice flips the usual subject–object relationship. In an active sentence, the subject is the agent, the one doing the action. In a passive sentence, the subject is the recipient, the one receiving the action.

The following is the basic structure of passive voice sentence:

As you can see, passive voice shifts the focus from who did the action to what received the action. Another important point is that in passive sentences, mentioning the agent is optional.

The results of the survey were analyzed by researchers to identify major trends.

The results of the survey were analyzed to identify major trends.

Both are grammatically correct. The first sentence names the agent (researchers), while the second leaves it out. This shows that in passive voice, the doer of the action is not always the main focus. The emphasis is on what happened to the subject.

Examples of Passive Voice Sentences

Next, let’s see how this construction is actually used in sentences.

The chemical solution was heated in the laboratory until it reached 100 degrees Celsius.

• Subject (recipient): The chemical solution
• Verb: was heated
• Verb doer (agent): none

This sentence is passive because the structure follows “subject + to be verb + past participle.” Notice that the agent is not mentioned, which is common in passive voice. The phrase “in the laboratory until it reached 100 degrees Celsius” adds detail, but the core structure (The chemical solution was heated) is already complete.

The Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776 by the representatives of the thirteen colonies.

• Subject (recipient): The Declaration of Independence
• Verb: was signed
• Verb doer (agent): the representatives of the thirteen colonies.

In this passive sentence, the subject, verb, and agent all appear together. The agent is easy to identify because it is introduced with the preposition “by.”