Question

The trees were cut down last month. This is an example of ____ passive voice.

Answer 1

Hint: Passive voice is used to lay focus on the action being performed in a sentence.

Complete step-by-step answer:

As given in the hint, passive voice focuses on the action performed in a sentence.
Example- My laptop was stolen. Here, we are focusing on the action rather than the ones who are acting.
There are two types of Passive Voices:
1)Personal Passive Voice- The object of the sentence in the active voice, becomes the subject of the sentence in the passive voice.
Example- The teacher gave the boys the pens.
                                The boys were given the pens.
2)Impersonal Passive Voice- This voice is used informally to claim a position without justifying it.
Example- People say that girls are afraid of insects.
                 Girls are said to be afraid of insects.
There is no object in the above-given statement. Hence, we can conclude that we have used the Impersonal Passive voice.
These are some of the uses of Passive Voice:
a)Passive Voice is used when we want to focus on the action of the subject rather than the ones who are performing it.
b)Passive Voice is used when a sentence lacks an object.
Hence, the correct answer is Impersonal Passive Voice.

Note: We use ‘by’ in the passive voice when there is an object in a sentence.