Can I drop to be verb in passive voice in these cases? Is it correct, what is the grammatical name of this phenomenon? [closed]

Entries successfully merged, pull request successfully merged?

Solution 1:

Yes, you definitely can. These are instances of reduced passive relative clauses. Reduced relative clauses are common in English:

A reduced relative clause is a relative clause that is not marked by an explicit relative pronoun or complementizer such as who, which or that. A participle can often be used instead of a relative pronoun and full verb.
e.g.

• Bikes that are ridden to school must be left in the bicycle racks. (full relative clause)
• Bikes ridden to school must be left in the bicycle racks. (participial phrase) (Wikipedia)

Sometimes, as the Wikipedia article shows, reduced relative clauses can be too ambiguous. But your examples do not have that sort of ambiguity. Merged is the past participle of the verb to merge, which is used in the passive voice.

Thus, instead of saying

Entries that/which were successfully merged

you can drop the bold part and you get the phrase you suggested:

Entries successfully merged