Kimberly Lang

Battling the Grammar Gremlins

Verbs, Verbs, Verbs

Kimberly Lang

“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,

Or close the wall up with our English dead” (Henry V, 3.1.1-2)

I don’t think the Grammar Gremlins actually kill people, but they can certainly wreak havoc on my sanity. A flurry of discussions on various loops and interesting statements made in the anonymity of the Internet have heated my blood and released my battle cry once again. Let’s go back into the grammar breach and discuss the wonderful world of verbs—tenses, voice (yep, here comes the lecture on those passives), and mood.

TENSE:

Tenses indicate the time of an action in relation to the time of speaking or writing about that action. (Passive, therefore is not a tense—it’s a voice, and we’ll get to that in a minute.)

Our tenses are present, past, and future, and each tense has a simple, perfect, and progressive form.

Simple present means the action occurs at the time of speaking or regularly occurs. Simple past is used for actions completed, and simple future means the action will occur later.

Simple Present: I walk to the store.

Simple Past: I walked to the store.

Simple Future: I will walk to the store tomorrow.

Easy enough. Next, we have the perfect. Formed by using a form of have plus the past participle, it expresses an action that was or will be completed at the time of another action.

Present Perfect: I have walked to the store every day of my life to get groceries.

Past Perfect: I had walked to the store and back by noon.

Future Perfect: I will have walked to the store thousands of times by the day I die. .

The progressive form describes an action in progress. It’s formed by using a form of be followed by the present participle (the –ing form of the verb).

Present Progressive: I am walking daily to help me lose weight.

Past Progressive: I was walking as part of a diet plan last year and lost five pounds.

Future Progressive: I will be walking each evening after dinner.

You can also have Perfect Progressives:

Present Perfect Progressive: I have been walking as part of my weight loss plan.

Past Perfect Progressive: I had been walking to lose weight, but now I go to the gym.

Future Perfect Progressive: I will have been walking for personal fitness for three years come June.

I provide you with this lecture on tenses because our fear of the “passive” has sent writers scrambling to remove any and all forms of to be from their sentences, claiming the presence of the word was somehow makes the sentence passive. Not so. Tense is tense—you can chart it on a timeline to show exactly when an action began or ended. It has nothing to with being active or passive, and you can’t go changing the past perfect or past progressive to something else just to get rid of the horrible was. Doing so changes the when of the sentence, and that’s just not right.

ACTIVE AND PASSIVE VOICE:

When we start looking at active and passive, we’re actually looking at who the actor is in relation to the action of a sentence.

Active: Fido caught the Frisbee. The subject of the sentence, Fido, is responsible for the action of the sentence, caught.

Passive: The Frisbee was caught by Fido. Here, the subject of the sentence, the Frisbee, isn’t doing anything. It’s not responsible for the action in the sentence. It’s being acted upon, instead of being the actor.

It does not matter what the verb in the sentence is; passive voice only applies when the subject of the sentence is not the actor of the sentence.

So, the sentence I was walking to the store is not passive—even though there’s a “was” in there. The subject of the sentence, I, is doing the action, was walking.

Rule of thumb is to always use the active, unless you have a specific purpose for using the passive. Passive sentences get boring because no one is actually doing anything—all the action is done to them, and that’s just no fun at all. The structure of passive voice also adds words to your sentences, and wordy sentences are often dull.

Use the passive when you want to emphasize the receiver of the action: The Cherokee Tribe was forced from its homelands. In this sentence, we’re focused the Cherokee Tribe. I would assume what follows would also focus on the Cherokees, not on the people who forced them off their land. If that’s where the focus should be, then using the passive is correct here.

Passive is also a handy voice to have when you want to avoid blame: The dishes didn’t get washed versus I didn’t wash the dishes. In the first sentence, no one is to blame. In the second, it’s my fault the dishes are still dirty. I don’t want the blame, so I’ll take the first sentence, even if it is passive.

ACTIVE VERBS:

You’ll hear people talk about “active verbs” and “passive verbs” as solutions to fixing the passive voice problem. Nope, sorry. They’ve confused two terms. So I don’t confuse you, we’re going to call them “strong verbs” and “weak verbs.”

Strong verbs carry action. Weak verbs do not. All forms of to be (be, am, is, are, were, was, being, been), are considered weak because they do not carry action. They don’t do anything; they just are. That does not make them bad, nor does that make them passive voice.

Van Gogh was an artist. There’s nothing wrong with this sentence, nor is it passive. There’s just no action in it. Yes, you could rewrite it as “Van Gogh painted,” but does that still carry the same meaning as the example? Nope. If the subject is linked to the noun that simply renames it or describes its state of being, you need to use a form of be.

However, if you can replace a weak verb with a strong one, do so.

Be verb: A power surge was responsible for frying my hard drive.

Passive: My hard drive was fried by a power surge.

Active: A power surge fried my hard drive.

I think we’d all agree that the active sentence here is best. Fewer words, more action, straight to the point.

Strong verbs will do wonders for your prose, but please don’t go crazy. It’s very annoying to have characters in books mosey, meander, trot, skitter, lope, or even pirouette across the room, when all the character really needs to do is “walk.” While some active verbs are more colorful than others (like skitter and lope), sometimes the less showy, yet perfectly strong and serviceable, verb (like walk) will do nicely.

MOOD:

Did you know that English is moody? Yep. Unlike you and me, though, English only has three moods, and only one of them is actually tricky.

The indicative mood is used for facts, opinions, and questions. The imperative is for orders or advice, and the subjunctive expresses wishes, requests, or conditions contrary to fact. Indicative and imperative are easy; you use those moods all the time and never even think about it (and that’s as it should be). The subjunctive is the one most likely to trip you up. Thankfully, there are only four situations that use the subjunctive and only two rules to remember when forming it.

The subjunctive is usually the same verb form as used in the normal (indicative) mood, except:

1) Present-tense verbs do not change form to agree in number and person of the subject. Subjunctive uses the base form of the verb with all subjects. (To find the base form, strip the to from the infinitive: to be = be, to drive = drive.)

It is important that Kim be (not “is) on time for her flight. We request that she enter (not “enters”) only one manuscript in the contest.

2) While all other past tense verbs use regular ol’ past tense (knew, painted), there is only one form of be used in past tense subjunctive: were (never was):

If I were you, I’d call your mother and ask. I wish he were able to come.

When to use the subjunctive:

Contrary-to-fact clauses beginning with if: If I were President, health care reform would be my top priority. You’re not the President; the sentence is expressing a condition that does not exist.

Contrary-to-fact clauses expressing a wish: Formal English requires the subjunctive in wish situations. I wish I were published. You will see the informal I wish I was published, but it’s not actually correct.

In that clauses following the verbs ask, insist, recommend, request, and suggest. Because the situation has not yet become reality, use the subjunctive. I insist that my students be on time for class. I recommend that Sally enter the manuscript in several contests.

In certain set expressions: The subjunctive mood was once more widely used in English, and we have leftover expressions handed down to us in the subjunctive: be that as it may, as it were, come rain or shine, far be it from me, etc.

An excellent site on everything verbs can be found at: http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/verbs.htm. They have quizzes, too. Go on; test yourself!

Until a new battle arises, I leave you to it. You can handle these verbs from here.