GRAMMAR THE PASSIVE VOICE The passive voice is used when the focus is on the action and it is not important to say who does the action, so the agent can be omitted. New open source software is being continuously designed. It is often used when the agent of the action is unknown or obvious. A computer was stolen in the school lab yesterday. (= we do not know who the thief is) A lot of programs are written every year. (= by programmers) Moreover, the passive voice is also used when someone knows who did the action but will not tell. A computer was damaged in the school lab yesterday while class 2C was there. The passive is formed with the verb be + the past participle of the main verb. To turn an active sentence into a passive one, the object of the active sentence becomes the subject of the passive sentence and the subject of the active sentence becomes the agent preceded by the preposition by (if necessary). John uses a spreadsheet to do maths calculations. (active form) A spreadsheet is used by John to do maths calculations. (passive form) A case when the preposition by is necessary is when the agent is a specific person/animal/object The Mac OS was created by Steve Jobs. My computer was broken by my cat. Backup is automatically made by the computer. VERB TENSE PASSIVE FORM Present Simple subject + am/are/is + past participle Past Simple subject + was/were + past participle Future Simple subject + will be + past participle Present Continuous subject + am/are/is + being + past participle Past Continuous subject + was/were + being + past participle Present Perfect Simple subject + have/has + been + past participle Past Perfect Simple subject + had + been + past participle Present Conditional subject + would be + past participle Past Conditional subject + would have + been + past participle Some verbs like send or give can have two objects; in this case, we have two different forms of the passive voice. They gave Sarah a new operating system. (active) 1. A new operating system was given to Sarah. 2. Sarah was given a new operating system. The 2nd form is the most commonly used. 188 Module 4 DEBUGGING