I am new in English grammar and I want to know about this sentence Please explain. In my book there is Continuing Passive, and I don't know what is passive sentences. Please help me
This book was being written.
This book is being written.
Please explain these sentence
"Passive voice" or "passive sentences" are sentences that focus on the object receiving the action of the verb. They may or may not say who or what is doing the action.
This book was being written.
This sentence is about the book only. We know someone must be writing it, books don't write themselves! But the sentence doesn't say who. The grammatical subject of the sentence is the word "book." The grammatical verb is the word "written" (there are some helping verbs too but I assume you know what they mean). But logically, the book is receiving the action of being written (it is the 'patient,' who is acted upon, and not the 'agent', who acts), so it's passive (a word related to the word 'patient').
The opposite of a passive sentence is an active sentence, like "I was writing the book". There, the book would be the object of the verb, not the subject. And the focus is on "I"--the one who's writing the book.
Passive voice is used for a few reasons. The most common ones are to shift the focus to the patient, and to hide who is actually doing an action.
For instance, in that last paragraph, I said "Passive voice is used" rather than "People use the passive voice." That's because I wanted to establish that the important thing is the passive voice itself, not the people who decide whether or not to use it in their speech.
As for hiding who is doing an action: think of a meeting of a city agency. If the speaker says "The zoning laws are still being written," he doesn't have to reveal that the people writing them have a financial interest in the outcome. Or if I say that "I've been invited to a party," I don't have to tell my parents that it was Joe who invited me (when I know that they hate him).
