The passive forms of a verb are created by combining a form of the "to be verb" with the past participle of the main verb. Other helping verbs are also sometimes present: "The measure could have been killed in committee." The passive can be used, also, in various tenses. Let's take a look at the passive forms of "design."
| Tense | Subject | Auxiliary | Past Participle | |
| Singular | Plural | |||
| Present | The car/cars | is | are | designed. |
| Present perfect | The car/cars | has been | have been | designed. |
| Past | The car/cars | was | were | designed. |
| Past perfect | The car/cars | had been | had been | designed. |
| Future | The car/cars | will be | will be | designed. |
| Future perfect | The car/cars | will have been | will have been | designed. |
| Present progressive | The car/cars | is being | are being | designed. |
| Past progressive | The car/cars | was being | were being | designed. |
A sentence cast in the passive voice will not always include an agent of the action. For instance if a gorilla crushes a tin can, we could say "The tin can was crushed by the gorilla ." But a perfectly good sentence would leave out the gorilla: "The tin can was crushed ." Also, when an active sentence with an indirect object is recast in the passive, the indirect object can take on the role of subject in the passive sentence:
| Active | Professor Villa gave Jorge an A. |
| Passive | An A was given to Jorge by Professor Villa. |
| Passive | Jorge was given an A. |
Only transitive verbs (those that take objects) can be transformed into passive constructions. Furthermore, active sentences containing certain verbs cannot be transformed into passive structures. To have is the most important of these verbs. We can say "He has a new car," but we cannot say "A new car is had by him." We can say "Josefina lacked finesse," but we cannot say "Finesse was lacked." Here is a brief list of such verbs*:
| resemble | look like | equal | agree with |
| mean | contain | hold | comprise |
| lack | suit | fit | become |