Active Passive Voice
🟢 Lite — Quick Review (1h–1d)
Rapid summary for last-minute revision before your exam.
Active voice places the doer of the action in the subject slot: Ravi writes the letter. Passive voice demotes the doer and promotes the receiver (object) to the subject slot, using a form of be + V3 (past participle): The letter is written by Ravi. Only transitive verbs (those that take a direct object) can be passivised — verbs like sleep, happen, arrive cannot.
The tense of the be auxiliary must mirror the tense of the active verb: writes → is written, wrote → was written, has written → has been written, will write → will be written. Modals follow the same rule: can write → can be written. For CUET UG English, expect 1–2 items on active-passive conversion per paper, usually as sentence transformation or fill-in-the-blanks worth 5 marks each.
🟡 Standard — Regular Study (2d–2mo)
Standard content for students with a few days to months.
Core Conversion Rule
In active voice the pattern is Subject + Verb + Object. To convert, slide the object to the front, add the appropriate form of be, and use the V3 form of the main verb. The original subject either moves to a by-phrase or is dropped.
Tense-wise Passive Structures
| Tense (Active) | Active Example | Passive Form | Passive Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Simple Present | She paints the wall. | is/am/are + V3 | The wall is painted. |
| Simple Past | He broke the glass. | was/were + V3 | The glass was broken. |
| Present Continuous | They are building a house. | is/am/are + being + V3 | A house is being built. |
| Past Continuous | She was writing a poem. | was/were + being + V3 | A poem was being written. |
| Present Perfect | He has finished the work. | has/have + been + V3 | The work has been finished. |
| Past Perfect | She had mailed the letter. | had + been + V3 | The letter had been mailed. |
| Simple Future | They will open the bank. | will + be + V3 | The bank will be opened. |
| Modal | You must sign the form. | modal + be + V3 | The form must be signed. |
Ditransitive Sentences
Sentences with two objects (She gave him a book) yield two valid passive forms: He was given a book and A book was given to him. Choose the form that preserves the natural focus.
Impersonal Passive
Report verbs like say, believe, know, claim can use It + passive + that-clause (It is said that he is rich) or shift to a subject-to-infinitive structure (He is said to be rich). Both forms are commonly tested in CUET.
🔴 Extended — Deep Study (3mo+)
Comprehensive coverage for students on a longer study timeline.
Agent Deletion and Impersonalisation
The by-phrase is omitted when the agent is unknown (My bike was stolen), obvious (The criminal was arrested), or irrelevant (The bridge was built in 1990). This is why headlines, lab reports, and academic prose favour the passive — it foregrounds the action, not the actor. Mastery here means recognising why a writer might choose passive even when active is grammatically possible.
Edge Cases and Non-Passivisable Constructions
- Intransitive verbs (happen, occur, sleep, die, arrive, lie) and linking verbs (become, seem) have no object, so no passive form exists. The accident was happened is ungrammatical — write The accident happened.
- Stative passives vs dynamic passives: The window is broken (state) differs from The window is being broken (action in progress). CUET often tests this distinction.
- Get-passive: informal English uses get + V3 (He got hurt) — avoid in formal CUET answers; stick with be + V3.
- Pronoun case after by: object form is required — by him, by her, by them, never by he/she/they.
- Causative have/get: She had the car washed (active, not passive) is a frequent trap in error-spotting items.
CUET Exam Strategy
Active-passive typically appears under Section IA (English) carrying ~4% weightage. Question formats include (1) converting an active sentence to passive, (2) identifying the correct passive form among options where tense or V3 is altered, (3) spotting the grammatically incorrect passive in a sentence, and (4) choosing the correct by-phrase form. Time budget: 60–90 seconds per item. Prioritise tense agreement and V3 accuracy — these two checks eliminate 80% of distractors.
Practice Prompts
- Convert The scientists have discovered a new planet into passive and rewrite it with the agent omitted.
- Identify the error: The match is being played since 5 p.m. — is the passive form correct? Explain.
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Sources & verification
- Official CUET UG syllabus & pattern: https://cuet.samarth.ac.in
- Editorial methodology: research → draft → fact-verify → curate pipeline
- Reviewed by Pushkar Saini · last updated
- Found an error? Email pushkersaini@gmail.com with the page URL and a one-line description — corrections typically actioned within 48 hours.