Passive

THE PASSIVE

I. PRESENTATION

Form

The passive is formed by using the auxiliary BE and the past participle (e.g. broken, driven, used).

I am convinced

I am not convinced

Am I convinced?

Focus on actions

We often use the passive to focus on something that happens to someone, when we do not want to focus on the person who does the action:

About 85% of the world’s rubber is produced in the Far East.

(Here, we use the passive because we do not know, or need to say, who produces it.)

Systems and processes

The passive is often used to talk about systems and processes:

On most rubber plantations, the latex is collected from rubber trees every day. It is mixed with water and then formic acid is added. This process creates crude rubber, which is then rolled into sheets.

Active or passive?

If it is important to say who performs an action, we can use the active or we can use the passive and the word ‘by’:

Active: Peter Franks runs the Marketing Department.

Passive: The Marketing Department is run by Peter Franks.

Both sentences are correct: if we were already talking about Peter Frank, we would probably use the active.

Peter is an old colleague of mine: he works for Butterfield International, and he runs the Marketing Department.

If we were talking about the Marketing Department, and don’t want to change the subject, we would probably use the passive:

The Marketing Department is a large and very successful division that employs over 100 people. It is run by Peter Franks.

II. PASSIVE VERBS AND INFINITIVES: have something done

Have something done

We can use the structure ‘have something done’ to talk about things we pay or employ other people to do for us. We use the verb have + object + past participle.

We have our books printed in Singapore.

Common mistakes:

We put the object before the past participle, not after it:

We have our car serviced by the local garage.

We have serviced our car by the local garage.

Get something done

In most cases, we can also use ‘get’ instead of ‘have’. This is slightly less formal:

We get our brochures printed in Hong-Kong.

GRAMMAR LESSONS

THE PASSIVE

Different tenses

We can use both ‘Have something done’ and ‘Get something done’ in different

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