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1. Watch for forms of the verb “to be”

The verb “to be” in all its various forms—“I am,” “you are,” “she or he is,” “they are,” “we have been”—occurs more frequently than any other verb in English. It’s a perfectly fine verb, but relying on it too much can make your sentences longer than they need to be. We’ll look at two ways that “to be” can creep into your writing and make it loose and meandering: the passive voice and “there is” forms.

THE PASSIVE VOICE Forms of the verb “to be” can signal the presence of the passive voice in your sentence. You’ve probably heard of the passive voice, but you might not be entirely sure what this sentence structure is. It’s called passive because the subject of the sentence is receiving the action of the sentence. Its opposite is the active voice, where the subject of the sentence is doing the action of the sentence. The passive voice is formed using the past participle of a verb (often ending in “-ed”) and a form of the verb “to be.” Because the subject of the sentence isn’t doing the action, it’s often necessary to add a phrase beginning with “by” to indicate who did it.

Let’s look at some examples.

Passive voice: The intruder was arrested by the security guard. Active voice: The security guard arrested the intruder.

In the passive voice version, the subject of the sentence, “the intruder,” is being acted upon. In the active version, the subject of the sentence, “security guard,” is performing the action.

Passive voice: Gender and annual income were cited by the research as the major drivers of purchase decisions. Active voice: The research cited gender and annual income as the major drivers of purchase decisions.

As you can see, the “action” of a verb isn’t always physical action—it’s the “doing” part of the sentence. In the example above, “the research” is doing the action, which is citing.

Passive: The beginning of the recession was signaled by a sharp dip in stock prices. Active: A sharp dip in stock prices signaled the beginning of the recession.

The action in this example is signaling, and it’s the dip in stock prices that’s doing it. In all these examples, you can see that the passive version is longer than the active version. Usually it’s a difference of just a few words, but if you make a habit of relying on the

passive voice and string together a whole paragraph of passive constructions, you can end up with a lot of verbiage you don’t need. Sometimes the actor in a passive sentence is omitted altogether:

Bus and subway fares were raised. [By whom? Surely not by the MTA?] Mistakes were made in dealing with the crisis. It was determined that the proper procedure had been followed.

Looking at examples like these, you can see how using the passive voice might be a handy way to avoid taking responsibility, and some writers use it for exactly that reason.

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