Grammar

Past passive: positive, negative and questions

1,500 fill-in-the-gap exercises across 3 forms

Was or were with the past participle. The tense of reports, history and news.

Pick a form to practice

The same topic in other tenses

One decision, then the past participle

Was for a singular subject, were for a plural one. Everything else is the past participle of the verb, which never changes.

The window was broken. The windows were broken.

As in the present, the verb agrees with the thing acted on, not with whoever did it:

The letters were written by one clerk.

The three sentence types

• The road was closed for two days.
• The road wasn’t closed until Tuesday.
• Was the road closed all week?

No did anywhere. The auxiliary is already there.

Where you will meet it

This is the standard tense of news reports and history:

• Two men were arrested at the scene.
• The bridge was destroyed during the war.
• The decision was taken without consultation.

Its usefulness is that it lets you state what happened when you do not know, or do not wish to say, who was responsible. That is also why it is worth reading critically: mistakes were made is a complete sentence with nobody in it.

The continuous version

For something under way at a past moment, add being:

The house was being renovated when we saw it.

Three words in order: was, being, past participle.

was born

Birth is always passive in English, and always with was or were:

He was born in 1987. — never he born or he is born.

All forms

Mistakes to avoid