Content tagged with "passive"

Some reporting verbs can be made impersonal with the personal pronoun it and the passive voice when the agent (the doer) of the action is unimportant, unknown or obvious.

subject + passive reporting verb + to-infinitive (simple or continuous)

If the reporting and the reported event happen simultaneously, i.e. in the same time frame, we use simple or continuous infinitives, depending on whether the verb in the reported clause was simple or continuous.

If the time frame is the present:

The agent is the person or thing that performs the action and is the subject of the active sentence. In most passive sentences, the agent is not mentioned. If it is mentioned, however, it is usually preceded by the preposition by:

The pigeons were dispersed by a tourist walking past. (A tourist walking past dispersed the pigeons.)
He was hit by a falling branch while walking in the woods. (A falling branch hit him while he was walking in the woods.)