Gerund adalah kata benda yang berasal dari kata kerja ditambah –ing, misalnya swimming, eating, fishing, shopping, dancing, dan singing. Bila diperhatikan, gerund mempunyai bentuk yang sama dengan present participle, bedanya gerund berfungsi sebagai kata benda, sedangkan present participle sebagai kata sifat yang menerangkan kata benda.

Dalam kalimat, gerund berfungsi sebagai:
a. subjek (subject)
b. pelengkap subjek (subjective complement)
c. objek langsung (direct object)
d. objek preposisi (object of preposition)
e. aposisi (appositive)


Subject
Gerund sebagai subjek pokok kalimat, contoh:
- Swimming is good service.- Your singing is very beautiful.
- Studying needs time and patience.
- Playing tennis is fun.
- Reading English is easier than speaking it.

Subjective Complement
Gerund sebagai pelengkap subjek dalam kalimat biasanya selalu didahului to be yang terletak di antara subject dan subjective complement, contoh:
- My favorite sport is running.- My favorite activity is reading.

Direct Object
Gerund sebagai objek langsung dalam kalimat, contoh:
- I enjoy dancing.- She likes dancing.
- Thank you for your coming.
- I hate arguing.

Object of Preposition
Gerund sebagai objek preposisi yang terletak setelah preposisi. Preposisi yang sering dipakai adalah of, on, no, with, without, at for, after, before, because of, to, like, about, for, by, in.
Contoh:
- He is tired of gambling.- I am fond of eating bakso.
- He insisted on seeing her.
- I have no objection to hearing your story.
- You will not be clever without studying.
- They are good at telling funny stories.
- In sleeping I met you in the park.

Appositive
Gerund sebagai aposisi atau penegas dalam kalimat, contoh:
- My hobby, fishing, is interesting.- I do not like quarrelling, a useless job.
My hobby is fishing dan fishing is interesting diletakkan bersebelahan dalam sebuah kalimat sebagai appositive (fishing adalah aposisi dari my hobby), begitu juga contoh kalimat dibawahnya.

In English, as in many other languages, the passive voice is a grammatical voice in which the subject receives the action of a transitive verb. Passive voice emphasizes the process rather than who is performing the action. Passive (or passive verb^[1]) refers more generally to verbs using this construction and the passages in which they are used. In English, a passive verb is periphrastic; that is, it does not have a one-word form, but consists of an auxiliary verb plus the past participle of the transitive verb. The auxiliary verb usually is a form of the verb to be, but other auxiliary verbs, such as get, are sometimes used. The passive voice can be used in any number of tenses. The process of changing an active verb into a passive one is called passivization. Passivization is a valence-decreasing process, and it is sometimes referred to as a detranzitivizing process, because it changes transitive verbs into intransitives.

In the following passage from the Declaration of Independence, the passive verbs are bolded, while the active verb hold and the copulative verb are are italicized:

One can still introduce the actor of a passive verb using a by phrase - as in the example above. When such a phrase is missing, the construction is called an agentless passive. Agentless passives are sometimes preferred in official writing because they are less confrontational, for instance when announcing someone's firing. Agentless passives are also used in scientific writing, where they are intended to provide an objective description in terms of processes rather than people. Using an agentless passive, a scientist may write:

without saying who actually did it, which is (or should be) irrelevant as far as the scientific process goes. This approach to scientific writing is not universally accepted, and some US organizations like the The Council of Biology Editors, have called for a more direct, active voice approach. Another entrenched use is the double passive construction used in American court reporting.

The active voice is the dominant voice in English at large, and many commentators, notably George Orwell in his essay "Politics and the English Language" and Strunk & White in The Elements of Style, have urged that the use of the passive voice should be minimized. However, there is general agreement that the passive is useful when the receiver of the action is more important than the doer.