Following on from my post explaining the differences between ‘lying’ and ‘laying’, another very common issue I find when I’m editing is confusion when using ‘passed’ and ‘past’.

Passed is the past tense of the verb ‘to pass’. It’s used to describe things that have already happened. It’s also the past participle of ‘to pass’ so it’s used for the passive voice (the law was passed) and perfect tenses (thirty years have passed by so quickly).

The definitions of ‘to pass’ are:

• To move or make something move (the cars passed along the street)
• To go by someone or something (we passed the supermarket on the way to the meeting)
• To give something to someone (he passed me the salt)
• To go by (time has passed so quickly)
• To be successful in something (I just passed my driving test)
• To approve a law (the law was passed)

Passed is only…