Question

The sentence has been in the Active/Passive voice. From the given options, choose the one which best expresses the given sentence in the Passive/Active voice.
His pocket has been picked.
a. They have his pocket picked.
b. Picking has been done to his pocket.
c. Picked has been his pocket.
d. Someone has picked his pocket.

Answer 1

Hint: Find out whether the sentence is in the active or passive voice. In, active voice certain punctuations are used and we quote the person, whereas in passive the punctuations are absent. Go through the given options and see which ones best fit the description of its opposite voice.

Complete answer: Let us first understand what active and passive voices
are. Active voice means that the given sentence has a subject that performs its verb. In short,
this means that the subject is visible or is present in the sentence.
Passive voice means that a subject is in place of an object, i.e. a recipient of a verb’s
action. This means that the subject is not outrightly seen. It is usually there but is
considered invisible. At the end of a passive voice sentence, to make the subject seen,
you just add ‘by someone’. This becomes the default subject.
To convert the active voice into passive voice, all you need to do is change the
order of the parts of speech. So, the ‘subject + verb + object’ in the active voice changes to
‘object + verb + (subject)’ in the passive voice.
Now we know that the given sentence is in the passive voice and we need to convert it into active voice. So, we do the exact opposite of the above-given procedure.

Now, we know what we are looking for. Let’s look at the given options:
a. They have his pocket picked. - This sentence is in the active voice, however, it is grammatically incorrect. This is not a correct construction of the given sentence. This is not the required answer. So, this is an incorrect option.
b. Picking has been done to his pocket. - This is sentence is technically in the passive voice. It is not a grammatically correct construction. This is not the required answer. So, this is an incorrect option.
c. Picked has been his pocket. - This is also a grammatically incorrect construction. This is not the required answer. So, this is an incorrect option.
d. Someone has picked his pocket. - This is in active voice and it is grammatically correct. This is the required answer. So, this is the correct option.
Therefore, option d is correct.

Note: In active voice, the subject acts, however, in the passive voice, the subject is placed at the end of the sentence. It is not outrightly visible, nor is it a command.