The Passive Voice

In English, sentences can be written in two types of voice: active and passive. All the 12 tenses that we learned in our English tenses guide show the active voice, but we can also use most of them in the passive voice.

In active sentences, the subject is the one performing the action on the object. For example, in the sentence I drink coffee every day, the subject is “I,” the action is “drink,” and the object is “coffee.” In this case, “I” am responsible for the action of drinking, and the coffee is what the action happens to.

The passive voice is different. In passive sentences, the subject receives the action rather than performing it. For example:

Active: My brother broke the window.
Passive: The window was broken.

Of course, the window did not break itself in this example. Someone or something else broke the window. We often use the passive voice when we do not know, or do not need to mention, who or what caused the action. In the example above, the active sentence answers “Who did it?” while the passive sentence answers “What happened?” By making “the window” the subject, the focus is on the window and the event, not on “my brother.”

The passive voice is also used very often when describing steps in a process, especially in manufacturing or production. For example, the process of making frozen fries:

-Potatoes are harvested from the fields.
-They are transported to the factory.
-They are washed, peeled, and sorted.
-The potatoes are cut into fries.
-The fries are blanched in hot water and lightly fried.
-They are frozen quickly to stay fresh.
-Finally, they are packaged and sent to stores.

Another example is the process of making Tabasco hot sauce, one of my least favorite hot sauces:

-Red chili peppers are picked when ripe.
-They are mashed into a paste.
-Salt is mixed into the mash.
-The mixture is stored in oak barrels and aged for several years.
-After aging, vinegar is added.
-The sauce is stirred until it reaches the right flavor.
-Finally, it is bottled, labeled, and shipped around the world.

In all these cases, the passive voice keeps the focus on the product and what happens to it, rather than on the people doing the work. In all these cases, the passive voice keeps the focus on the product and what happens to it, rather than on the people performing the actions. It is also perfectly correct to write these sentences in the active voice, for example, “workers harvest the potatoes” or “people mash the peppers.” The difference is that using active voice puts attention on the “someone” doing the action, while using passive voice shifts the focus to the product and the process itself. In descriptions of production steps, we usually want the focus to stay on the product rather than the people involved.