Question

Change the following sentence to passive voice.
Many housewives do not cook food.
a. Food will not be cooked by many housewives.
b. Cooking of food is not done by many housewives.
c. Food is not cooked by many housewives.
d. Food cannot be cooked by many housewives.

Answer 1

Hint: Read the sentence and try to convey it to a third person in your own words. Then, go through the given options and see which ones resemble the sentence you just formed in your head, that is, passive voice. Make sure that the sentences are not unnecessarily lengthened. Choose the correct option accordingly.

Complete answer: Let us first understand what active and passive voices
are. Active voice means that the given sentence has a subject that performs its verb. In short, this means that the subject is visible or is present in the sentence. For example, in the given question, the sentence ‘Many housewives do not cook food’, the subject is ‘many housewives’.
Passive voice means that a subject is in place of an object, i.e. a recipient of a verb’s action. This means that the subject is not outrightly seen. It is usually there but is considered invisible. At the end of a passive voice sentence, to make the subject seen, you just add ‘by someone’. This becomes the default subject. However, in the given sentence there is no need to add an extra subject as it is not invisible.
In order to convert the active voice into passive voice, all you need to do is change the order of the parts of speech. So, the ‘subject + verb + object’ in active voice changes to ‘object + verb + (subject)’ in the passive voice. We also need to make sure that the words remain, more or less, the same.

Now, we know what we are looking for. Let’s look at the given options:
a. Food will not be cooked by many housewives. - In this sentence, the main verb has been changed. This is not done while converting a sentence into passive voice. This is not the required answer. So, this is an incorrect option.
b. Cooking of food is not done by many housewives. - In this sentence, the type of verb and its tense has been changed. This is not done while converting a sentence into passive voice. This is not the required answer. So, this is an incorrect option.
c. Food is not cooked by many housewives. - In this sentence, the order of the different parts of speech has been reversed, which is the correct thing to do. This is the required answer. So, this is the correct option.
d. Food cannot be cooked by many housewives. - In this sentence, the meaning of the original statement has been changed. This is not done while converting a sentence into passive voice. This is not the required answer. So, this is an incorrect option.

Note: In active voice, the subject plays a pivotal and important role in the sentence, however, in the passive voice, the object is considered the important part, as it is placed first. Sometimes, it is not outrightly visible, nor is it a command.