Passive: Present and Past

Be shows tense and number: I am, singular is, plural and you are. The main verb takes its past participle, or third form: checked, made, written, sent. Do not add -s to V3.

The passive subject is the receiver of the action. Make be agree with that subject: Each box is weighed, but All boxes are weighed. With I, use am: I am paid on Fridays.

For a negative, put not after am/is/are: The fee is not included; Paper copies are not accepted. The contractions isn’t and aren’t are natural. Do or does is unnecessary because be is already the auxiliary.

In a yes/no question, place am/is/are before the subject: Is the fee included? Keep this structure after how/why/where: How are the samples tested? If the question word itself is the subject, do not add another subject: Who is invited? An affirmative short answer uses the full form: Yes, they are, not Yes, they’re.

The Present Simple passive describes general facts and habitual repeated actions: Spanish is spoken here; Orders are checked every morning. Expressions such as usually, every day or on Fridays can specify frequency, but the whole context determines the form.

When explaining a process, present each step as a typical operation: First, the seeds are dried. The Present Simple passive can also describe a stable schedule or arrangement: The team meeting is held online every Friday. This does not mean the action is happening right now.

Add by + agent when the agent contributes relevant information: The final report is approved by the director. In Orders are packed before noon, generic agents such as workers or staff add nothing useful and can naturally be omitted.

By identifies who performs the action. An instrument is often introduced with with: The label is printed with a special machine. Do not automatically add by people, by someone or by them to every passive.

To change an active sentence into the passive, make its object the new subject, choose am/is/are to agree with it, and use the verb’s V3. If needed, the old subject becomes the agent after by: Local volunteers sort the books → The books are sorted by local volunteers.

Preserve tense, negation, question form, quantities and participants. Staff do not record calls → Calls are not recorded by staff. Do staff check all three alarms? → Are all three alarms checked by staff? The passive does not allow you to change three to some or omit an important agent.

We normally form the passive from a verb with an object: Staff inspect the lift → The lift is inspected. Intransitive verbs such as happen, arrive and sleep have no such object: A problem happens; The train arrives. Is happened and is arrived are incorrect in these meanings.

Do not confuse neighbouring forms. Are checked every Friday is Present Simple passive; were checked yesterday is Past Simple passive; are being checked now is Present Continuous passive; have been checked already is Present Perfect passive. Get checked belongs to the get-passive, which has a different register and nuance.

Some -ed forms have become adjectives. The museum is closed today most naturally describes a state, whereas The museum is closed by staff at six describes a regular action. Context sometimes allows both readings, so do not classify a sentence solely by the appearance of the word.

Use was with I, he, she, it and a singular subject; use were with you, we, they and plural subjects. The main verb takes its past participle: checked, sent, written, taken or found. For irregular verbs, the simple past and participle may differ: broke/broken, took/taken, wrote/written.

Was or were agrees with the new passive subject, not with the agent after by: The report was signed by two directors, but Both reports were signed by the director. The participle itself does not change for singular and plural subjects.

Put not after was or were: The fee was not included; The files were not deleted. Wasn't and weren't are ordinary contractions. Do not add did not: the auxiliary be already forms the negative.

For a yes/no question, move was or were before the subject: Was the order cancelled? For an information question, put the question word first: Why was the order cancelled? A subject question such as Who was invited? has no additional subject. Short answers repeat be: Yes, it was; No, they weren't.

Choose the Past Simple when you present a past event as a completed whole: a single occurrence, a sequence or a fact in a report. The time can be explicit, such as at six, on Monday or in 2024, or established by context, such as minutes recording that a proposal was rejected.

Words such as yesterday, last week and in 2024 support a past reading, but do not create a passive. The train arrived has no object to promote to a passive subject. Was or were alone is also not a reliable diagnostic: was being checked describes a process, while was tired describes a state. Check the time context and the full verb structure.

Use by to name the performer or cause when that information matters: an artist may create something, and a storm may damage something. Phrases such as by someone, by people or by the staff often add little when the agent is unknown or already obvious.

Use with for a tool: a door can be opened with a spare key by the caretaker. An inanimate cause can still follow by, so an inanimate noun after by is not automatically a mistake.

To turn an active clause into a passive one, make its object the new subject, choose was or were to agree with that subject, use the past participle and keep the old subject after by if needed. Two inspectors signed the form becomes The form was signed by two inspectors.

Preserve the exact time, negation, question type, number and participant roles. The team did not approve either proposal on Tuesday can become Neither proposal was approved by the team on Tuesday. Did the guard lock all four doors? can become Were all four doors locked by the guard? Do not turn both objects into one, drop not or change the agent.

A passive normally requires a transitive use of the verb: Someone damaged the gate has an object. Happen, arrive, sleep and die in their usual intransitive meanings do not: was happened and was died are not the corresponding passive forms.

Compare the full chains: was checked after lunch presents a completed past action; is checked every day is present passive; was being checked at noon is an ongoing past process; had been checked before the inspector arrived is earlier than another past event; has been checked already relates a past action to the present. Got damaged is a get-passive, outside the target be-passive form.

Be + past participle can also describe a state. The door was closed all evening may describe its condition, whereas The door was closed by the guard at nine points to an event. Do not insist on a single interpretation solely because you see closed.

In the present, the first auxiliary agrees with the subject: I am; he/she/it and singular nouns take is; you/we/they and plural nouns take are. Then use being and the past participle, V3. To express this passive process, do not omit being or replace V3 with the base form.

Place not after the first auxiliary: is not being, are not being. In a question, move am/is/are before the subject, leaving being + V3 after it. A short answer repeats only the first auxiliary: Yes, it is. / No, they aren't.

The contractions isn't and aren't are natural. They do not change the grammatical chain: not attaches to is/are, while being and V3 remain in place.

In the past, I/he/she/it and singular noun subjects take was; you/we/they and plural subjects take were. Being and V3 remain unchanged. A clock time, period or another event provides the time reference: at 8 p.m., during the inspection, when we arrived.

Past Continuous passive often supplies a background process during which another event happened: The road was being repaired when the bus arrived. A when-clause is not compulsory, however: a clear reference such as At noon is sufficient.

Negatives and questions work as in the present: was not/were not being + V3; Was/Were + subject + being + V3? Short answers repeat was or were.

The main verb takes its past participle, V3. Regular verbs generally use -ed: repair → repaired, check → checked. Learn irregular forms separately: build → built, write → written, take → taken, send → sent, hold → held, put → put.

The first form of be expresses tense and subject agreement. Do not change being to been: is being built, were being written. Been belongs in perfect passives such as has been built; being belongs in this lesson's continuous form.

Check the chain from left to right: 1) am/is/are or was/were, 2) optional not, 3) being, 4) V3. This catches missing being, incorrect agreement and base forms used instead of participles.

The active sentence's object becomes the passive sentence's subject: The team is repairing the gate → The gate is being repaired. Preserve tense, negation, number and other details. Changing is being repaired to was repaired changes both the time reference and the process perspective.

The agent is often omitted when unknown, obvious or unimportant. If the agent matters, add by + agent. Introduce an instrument or means with with: by the technician, but with a spare key.

The passive does not automatically improve a message. When the agent is the main topic, active continuous is often more direct. When the topic is an object, service, repair or procedure in progress, the passive helps maintain that focus.

Present Simple passive presents a routine, repeated fact or general situation: The rooms are checked every morning. Present Continuous passive presents a temporary process around now: The rooms are being checked now. Both are grammatical, but answer different questions.

Past Simple passive presents a past event as a whole or as a completed fact: The room was checked at nine. Past Continuous passive shows the process in progress at a past point: At nine, the room was being checked. It does not rule out later completion; it simply does not focus on completion.

In these examples, perfect passive adds a completed-action perspective: The room has been checked presents a result relevant now; The room had been checked before we arrived locates completion before another past point. Do not call these neighbouring forms incorrect without context. They miss the learning target only when the instructions specifically require a process at a particular moment.

An ordinary passive transformation moves an object into subject position: workers are repairing the road → the road is being repaired. Verbs without such an object cannot undergo this transformation. State verbs often do not take continuous forms in their usual meanings.

Be + V3 does not always describe a passive event. The museum is closed today naturally describes a state, with closed functioning as an adjective. A closing process needs a suitable verb use and context: The gates are being closed for the night.

A grammatical pattern is not appropriate in every situation. A decision is being known and The box is being belonged to me are not natural ways to express these states. Use The decision is known or The box belongs to me. Avoid inventing a universal ban list, however: a verb's meaning and actual context matter more than a mechanical label.

Perfect continuous passives such as has been being repaired are grammatically possible but often cumbersome and rare. At B1, an active paraphrase or simpler passive is usually preferable. This marks the topic's boundary; it does not prove every long verb form is always wrong.