Passive & Active Voice

First, let's eliminate confusion. Passive voice and past tense are different. Past tense is usually formed by adding a -d or -ed to a regular verb. For example, sympathize in present tense becomes sympathized in the past tense.

Passive voice, on the other hand, contains the past participle of a verb coupled with a form of to be, including am, is, are, was, were, being, been. The problem with passive voice is the reader loses who completed the action. Looking at the picture, at right, we can see an example of passive voice in the first line:

"Air will be taken out of tires."

The question that looms: Who will take the air out of the tires?

Instead, we might say the following:

"Owners will take air out of tires."

For purposes of clarity, the subject should precede the verb. That being said, sometimes if we do not know the subject, we could write in passive voice. For instance, if we don't know the name of a murderer, we could write,

"Mr. Body was murdered today with the candlestick in the conservatory."

Learn more about passive voice at UNC's Writing Center.