Advanced Passive Voice: Reporting Verbs

                                

Advanced Passive Voice: Reporting Verbs

In advanced English, we often use the passive voice to report thoughts, beliefs, or rumors without attributing them to a specific person. This is common in academic writing, journalism, and even historical accounts.

1. The Two Advanced Structures

When using verbs like believe, claim, consider, expect, know, report, say, or think, there are two ways to form the passive:

A. The Impersonal "It" Construction

This is the more straightforward way to distance the writer from the claim.

• Formula: It + Passive Reporting Verb + that + Clause

• Example: "It is claimed that the ancient Library of Alexandria held over 400,000 scrolls."

B. The Subject + Passive Infinitive Construction

This is considered more "elegant" and is frequently tested in advanced proficiency exams (C1/C2).

• Formula: Subject + Passive Reporting Verb + to-infinitive

• Example: "The Library of Alexandria is claimed to have held over 400,000 scrolls."

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2. Matching the Tenses (The Infinitive Shift)

The trickiest part of the advanced passive is choosing the correct form of the infinitive based on when the action happened.

Time of Action	Infinitive Form	Example (Active to Passive)
Same time / Future	Simple Infinitive (to do)	"People believe he is a genius." → "He is believed to be a genius."
Previous action	Perfect Infinitive (to have done)	"Historians think she died in 30 BC." → "She is thought to have died in 30 BC."
Continuous action	Continuous Infinitive (to be doing)	"They report he is hiding in Africa." → "He is reported to be hiding in Africa."

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