"I opened the door."
a)The door was opened.
b)The door was opened by me.
Are the two options correct? Is the agent required in this sentence?
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1Both are correct, the agent is not obligatory, you can put it if you want your listener to know who opened the door.– Mohd Zulkanien SarbiniCommented Feb 21, 2017 at 6:55
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In a normal conversation (not in a police interrogation, for example), a native speaker, when asked who opened the door, is far more likely to say "I opened the door" (with vocal emphasis on the first-person pronoun) than "the door was opened by me". Many active-to-passive exercises give learners a very distorted sense of when the passive is to be used.– TimRCommented Feb 21, 2017 at 12:03
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1 Answer
As commented by @user178049, both sentences in the passive are correct.
In the passive voice, you can omit who the doer is. But if you want to focus on the doer, you can add by + the doer.
