Select the option that expresses the following sentence in passive voice. The waiter had meticulously served the customers their meals before leaving his duty.
The customers had meticulously been served their meals by the waiter before leaving his duty.
Identify the tense. The active verb is had served, the past perfect. Its passive is formed as had been + past participle.
Note the two objects. Serve here takes both ‘the customers’ (person) and ‘their meals’ (thing). Either could become the subject; the options all take the person, so ‘The customers’ becomes the subject and ‘their meals’ is retained after the verb — this is called a retained object.
That gives ‘The customers had meticulously been served their meals by the waiter before leaving his duty.’
Why the others fail — all three keep the passive but change the tense:
‘Were meticulously being served’ — past continuous passive, describing an action in progress rather than one completed.
‘Were meticulously served’ — simple past passive; it loses the sense of ‘earlier than the leaving’ that had supplies, which is the point of the sentence.
‘Have meticulously been served’ — present perfect passive, bringing the action up to the present and clashing with the past setting.
Takeaway: had in the active becomes had been in the passive. Match the auxiliary and three of four options fall away.
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