Using passive voice
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Omitting or including the agent | page 3 of 3 |
Omitting the agent
The agent is very often omitted in passive clauses. In fact, agentless passive clauses are in most contexts more common than passive clauses with agents. However, there is a tendency for students in Hong Kong to overuse passive clauses with agents, perhaps because students are often asked to practise passive voice by doing lots of transformations from active voice.
There may be a number of reasons for wanting to omit the agent. They include the following:
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It is obvious from the context who or what the agent is: |
Mr Barker said people in the camps told him the police arrived at 6 am and asked all those waiting to return voluntarily to Vietnam to step forward. Other volunteers were then asked to come out. (SCMP 22/4/94)
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It is obvious from our general knowledge who or what the agent is: |
The amount of fertiliser added to the soil should help to restore the soil to what it was before crops were grown on it. (Bank of English)
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The agent is unknown or unimportant: |
Militant To Kwa Wan shopkeepers fighting government eviction yesterday threatened to demolish the area by blowing up 10 canisters of liquefied petroleum gas. Teams of firemen and medics were called and police closed off Pak Tai Street as joss-stick shop boss Chan Wai-man confronted officers with gas cylinders. (SCMP 14/4/94)
And today Brennan was reported to be lunching with a couple of old friends. (Bank of English)
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The identity of the agent is known, but the speaker or writer does not wish to reveal it for personal or political reasons: |
The window has been broken. (Naughty Schoolboy)
They said they were investigating a demonstration over the weekend in which tear-gas was used against 3,000 participants. A Hong Kong Cable TV news reporter and cameraman covering the protest were detained for about three hours on Sunday for failing to get official approval to report the event. Some of their tapes were seized and a video camera was confiscated for a short while. (SCMP 12/4/94)
For more information on omission of the agent with verbs representing thinking and
saying, see 
Using passive voice: Passive voice
with thinking and saying verbs.
If you would like to see a teaching activity for Secondary 3 which gives students
practice in omitting the agent, click on 
DESCRIBING OBJECTS.
Omitting the agent
