AI overview
Voice is a grammatical feature of verbs that shows the relationship between the action and who is performing it, with the main distinction being between active voice (where the subject performs the action) and passive voice (where the subject receives the action). Understanding voice matters because it affects how clearly and directly a sentence communicates, influencing both the tone and readability of writing.
AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.
Article
In grammar, the voice (or diathesis) of a verb describes the relationship between the action (or state) that the verb expresses and the participants identified by its arguments (subject, object, etc.). When the subject is the agent or doer of the action, the verb is in the active voice. When the subject is the patient, target or undergoer of the action, the verb is said to be in the passive voice. When the subject both performs and receives the action expressed by the verb, the verb is in the middle voice.
The following pair of examples illustrates the contrast between active and passive voice in English. In sentence (1), the verb form ate is in the active voice, but in sentence (2), the verb form was eaten is in the passive voice. Independent of voice, the cat is the Agent (the doer) of the action of eating in both sentences.