When to use the passive, and when not

The pattern

Use the passive when the doer is unknown, obvious or unimportant. When the doer is you, your organisation or your reader, say so in an active sentence.

• Form: worden plus the past participle (the form like gemaakt or bezorgd), or zijn plus the participle in the perfect tenses. See The passive with worden.
• Unknown doer: Mijn fiets is gestolen.
• Obvious doer: De verdachte is aangehouden. (by the police, who else?)
• Unimportant doer, because the result is the news: De vergadering is verplaatst naar donderdag.
• Known doer who matters, especially you or your reader: go active. We hebben de vergadering naar donderdag verplaatst.

Examples

Why it works this way

Think of the subject as a spotlight: it shows what the sentence is about. An active sentence lights up the doer: De buurman heeft mijn fiets gerepareerd. The passive moves the light to the thing that undergoes the action and lets the doer fade into the dark: Mijn fiets is gerepareerd. That is exactly right when the doer adds nothing.

With door, the doer comes back, at the end of the sentence, where Dutch tends to put new information. That is why the station example works: the station is the topic, the designer is the news. If neither is true, the active version is usually shorter.

That dark corner is also why many official texts love the passive. Combine it with nouns made from verbs (see Nominalisation) and nobody seems responsible: Na ontvangst van uw betaling wordt uw aanvraag in behandeling genomen. Compare Zodra we uw betaling hebben ontvangen, behandelen we uw aanvraag. Same facts, but now a person is talking to you. Many Dutch organisations are rewriting their letters in exactly this way. The passive still has its place in formal writing: in reports, news and legal texts, the process or the result often really is the topic.

In your own emails, use we for your team and u or je for your reader. Je also works for general instructions, as in the form example (see Men, je and ze). When something has gone wrong, hiding the doer can sound evasive: Er is een fout gemaakt almost suggests the mistake made itself, while We hebben een fout gemaakt sounds honest.

Remember: ask who does it and whether your reader cares. Nobody knows or nobody cares: passive. You, your team or your reader: active.

Watch out

• نادرستMijn fiets is gisteren gestolen geworden.

  درستMijn fiets is gisteren gestolen.

  the perfect passive is zijn plus the participle, without geworden

• نادرستIk ben een nieuwe laptop gegeven.

  درستIk heb een nieuwe laptop gekregen.

  in standard Dutch, the receiver of geven does not become the subject of a passive; use krijgen

• نادرستHet formulier is van mijn huisarts ingevuld.

  درستHet formulier is door mijn huisarts ingevuld.

  the doer follows door, not van; German von misleads

• نادرستHet wordt op kantoor veel geklaagd over de koffie.

  درستEr wordt op kantoor veel geklaagd over de koffie.

  a passive without a subject uses er, not het

Quick check

Use it today

Take one automatic email or letter you received this week, from your energy supplier, the gemeente or a webshop, and underline every worden or zijn with a participle. Rewrite two of those sentences with we and u or je, and decide which version you would rather receive.