The active voice is when the subject of a sentence carries out an action on an object. In other words, the subject does the action, and the object receives the action.

Here’s an example of a sentence using the active voice:

The cat ate my dinner.

In this example, "the cat" is the subject, "ate" is the verb, and "my dinner" is the object.

Here, "the cat" is doing (or, in this case, has already done) the action: it is the one that "ate" - "dinner" is the object that is receiving this action of eating.

The passive voice is more or less the opposite of the active voice: it’s when the subject is acted upon by the object. In other words, the subject receives the action, and the object does the action.

If we make the same sentence into the passive voice then it will be easier to see the difference.

My dinner was eaten by the cat

Note that the object here is always preceded by the word "by."

Subject (recipient) → Verb (past participle of "to be" form) → Object (doer)

In this example, "my dinner" is the subject, "was eaten" is the verb, and "the cat" is the object.

The subject "my dinner" is receiving the action on the object "the cat"

For now we'll just discuss passive voice. This is when we talk about what happens to the subject of a sentence instead of what the subject does. This emphasizes what happens, NOT who or what caused it to happen.

Here are some examples:

• "This church was built in the 16th century." - we do not care who built the church, just the fact that it was built
• "Sometimes all the food in the house has been eaten by the time I get home from work." - this emphasizes the fact that all the food has been eaten but it doesn't matter by whom it was eaten
• "The zoo was reopened yesterday." - this emphasizes that the zoo was reopened but not by who or why