Active & Passive Voice

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Voice transformation is mechanical once you have the tense table. Three things move: the object comes to the front, the verb becomes a form of be plus the past participle, and the old subject goes to the end after by.

About the examples on this page. The 2022 Constable paper tested passive voice only as a fill-in-the-blank (Q9, worked on the Articles & Prepositions page), not as a transformation. The transformations below are constructed for practice and marked as such.

The Basic Move

Active: Subject + Verb + Object

Passive: Object + correct form of be + past participle (V₃) + by + Subject

The tense never changes — only the form of be carries it.

Tense Table

Tense	Active	Passive
Simple present	writes	is / are written
Present continuous	is writing	is / are being written
Present perfect	has written	has / have been written
Simple past	wrote	was / were written
Past continuous	was writing	was / were being written
Past perfect	had written	had been written
Simple future	will write	will be written
Future perfect	will have written	will have been written
Modals	can / must write	can / must be written

Perfect continuous tenses have no passive form. "He has been writing a letter" simply stays active. If an option offers "has been being written", it is wrong by construction.

Special Cases

Type	Active	Passive
Imperative	Close the door.	Let the door be closed.
Yes-no question	Did she write it?	Was it written by her?
Wh- question	Who broke the glass?	By whom was the glass broken?
Two objects	He gave me a book.	A book was given to me by him.
Intransitive verb	She sleeps.	no passive — there is no object

Practice Examples

Constructed practice question

Change to passive: The committee is reviewing the applications.

Object "the applications" moves to the front; the tense is present continuous, so the passive takes are being + V₃.
The applications are being reviewed by the committee.
Note the number change: the new subject is plural, so it is "are being", not "is being". The verb agrees with whatever now sits in front of it.

Constructed practice question

Change to passive: Close the gate at once.

Imperatives have no stated subject, so the passive uses the Let … be pattern.
Let the gate be closed at once.
Variant: for instructions, "You are requested to close the gate" is also acceptable, but Let … be is the form examinations expect.

Constructed practice question

Change to passive: Did the officer sign the report?

Keep it a question, and keep the simple past. The auxiliary moves to the front.
Was the report signed by the officer?
Note: "did" disappears entirely — it only marked the tense in the active form, and was now carries it.

Constructed practice question

Change to passive: They gave him a medal.

With two objects, either can become the subject, giving two valid passives:
A medal was given to him by them.
He was given a medal by them.
Note: when the thing is fronted, the person needs to before it. Examinations usually print only one of the two, so check which pattern the options follow rather than assuming yours is missing.

"By + agent" is often dropped. When the doer is unknown or unimportant — "The shop was robbed last night" — the phrase is left out entirely. An option without "by them" is not automatically wrong.

Also see: Narration · Sentence Correction · Tenses