Passive vs. Active Voice

What Is Active Voice?

It's simpler. In an active sentence, the subject is doing the action. A straightforward example is the sentence "Cardinals show R.E.S.P.E.C.T." Cardinals is the subject, and THEY ARE doing the action: THEY show RESPECT, the object of the sentence.

Another example is the title of the song “I Heard It through the Grapevine.” "I" is the subject, the one who is doing the action. "I" is hearing "it," the object of the sentence.

What Is Passive Voice?

In passive voice, the target of the action gets promoted to the subject position. Instead of saying, "Cardinals show RESPECT," I would say, "RESPECT is shown by the Cardinals." The subject of the sentence becomes RESPECT, but it isn't doing anything. The focus of the sentence has changed from "Cardinals" to "RESPECT".

If you wanted to make the title of the song passive, you would say “It was heard by me through the grapevine,” which isn't such a catchy title anymore.