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I’m trying to figure out how to build passive voice sentence. So i’ve seen video by BBC that called “Lion attacked by pack of hyenas”. Is it wrong? Maybe it should be something like “Lion was attacked by pack of hyenas”?

Dmitry Unknown
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    In the context of normal spoken English, “Lion attacked by pack of hyenas” and “Lion was attacked by pack of hyenas” would both be wrong. You'd have to say something like "In this video, a lion is attacked by a pack of hyenas." Articles are left out in headlines but mandatory in spoken English. – herisson Feb 17 '19 at 17:55
  • Ok thanks. I get it, it’s called “ellipsis”. But why should i use verb to be in present simple tense? Not past – Dmitry Unknown Feb 17 '19 at 18:26
  • Either past or present tense is grammatical, but in the context of a title, I would interpret the ellipsis as involving the present tense. It is telling you what "happens" in the video. But you could use the past tense to talk about what "happened" when the video was recorded. – herisson Feb 17 '19 at 18:32
  • It shouldn't be present simple tense. It's headlinese for something like "a lion that is being attacked by a pack of hyenas," not a complete sentence but a noun phrase. And it's past simple because being is dropped from the present passive continuous. – Peter Shor Feb 17 '19 at 18:32

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