Don't bore your readers with pompous writing

One really great way to make your readers go away is to sneer at them, write pompously. Works every time; they will make a point of avoiding what you wrote. And one great way to write pompously is to drain the energy of your sentences with “being” verbs, like this:

I am hopeful that that solution to your predicament will be an effective resolution to your problem.

What is this writer trying to say? The sentence was in trouble even before it appeared on the screen.

Look at it. It starts with a being verb and a latinized adjective: “am hopeful.” The writer could easily have replaced it with the action verb “hope.” Then we have “that that.” Grammatically it’s all right, but it’s awkward. Then we read “will be an effective resolution to your problem.” What’s that clause doing there?

The writer can write the sentence much more clearly this way:

I hope that solves your problem.

Technically, action verbs and their opposites, being verbs, don’t exist. What writers informally call action verbs, grammarians divide into transitive verbs, which move the action from the subject to the object of the sentence, and intransitive verbs, which sounds active but has no object.

Transitive: He drove the car.

Intransitive: She swam.

What writers call being verbs, grammarians call linking verbs, because they link the subject with the object to describe a state of being.

You are beautiful.

For the practical writer, though, it is enough to know that action verbs do things, but being verbs simply are. Since action verbs add energy to sentences and being verbs usually sap sentences of energy, good writers prefer action verbs.

Being (or Linking) Verbs

Being verbs are, or they were, or they have been. But they simply won’t do. Here’s an example:

Major League Baseball was the first sports organization to institute the concept of free agency for its players.

Major League Baseball created free agency.

Action verbs serve no greater service to English than when they replace a noun, one that just sits there.  In the next example, the verb “edits” takes the place of “the editor.” In the replacement process, we also manage to extract another freeloader, the preposition “of.”

He is the editor of two magazines.
He edits two magazines.

We can’t always depend on action verbs to eliminate words. Sometimes they actually add words but, as in the next example, allow a little paring later in the sentence.

Officials of the Air Line Pilots Association and United Airlines expressed satisfaction Friday with an almost unanimous vote by pilots in favor of a four-year wage agreement.

Officials of the Air Line Pilots Association and United Airlines said Friday they are satisfied by the pilots’ near-unanimous vote for a four-year wage agreement.

Some more examples:

She is a self-proclaimed renaissance woman.
She calls herself a renaissance woman.

Every year there is a race along the Inca Trail.
Each year a race takes place along the Inca Trail.

She is still in need of instruction and practice.
She still needs instruction and practice.

Creativity Killers?

Journalists and other nonfiction writers aren’t supposed to make things up, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be creative in the way they present their facts. And a slavish, literal adherence to rules like these can kill creativity.

Here’s how one of the 20th Century’s great wordsmiths, H.L. Mencken, put it in A Book of Prefaces for someone “with an ear for verbal delicacies” who searches “… painfully for the perfect word, and puts the way of saying a thing above the thing said —there is in writing the constant joy of sudden discovery, of happy accident.”

Such a dictum from a man whose fame derived from the way he wrote editorial columns — not unbiased reporting — might provide a quandary for nonfiction writers today. It would seem that content should reign, that the “thing said” should always outrank the “way of saying it.” But we can take some solace from the fact that rarely do the two collide.

Mencken — who admitted he was not a fair person — might simply be saying that writers should never get so picky with their content or their prose that they kill the great joy that can come from writing and discovering that they have indeed developed that elusive thing called style.

Few of the seemingly arcane rules of journalistic writing are so absolute that they cannot be ignored or broken. If you do break a rule, though, make it a conscious crime. Make sure you know why you’re doing it. One definition of professional non-fiction writers —or professional anythings— is that they know the rules well enough to know when to break them.

Next: An Appearance of Honesty

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Robert M. Knight is author of Journalistic Writing: Building the Skills, Honing the Craft, to be released this spring by Marion Street Press. As a freelancer, Knight has written for more than 40 publications and news services. He began his career at United Press International and is a former senior editor and broadcast editor of the City News Bureau of Chicago and a former adjunct professor at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania and Northwestern University in Chicago and Evanston, Illinois.

This blog post is excerpted from Knight’s soon-to-be-published Journalistic Writing: Building the Skill; Honing the Craft

The use of active voice might be the least understood element in English that most people think they understand. They understand even less when they get the use of active voice confused with the use of action verbs. And many do. Many editors can’t keep them straight.

Fact is, they aren’t even related. They just sound as if they are. A sentence written in active voice can include a “being” verb.

Assam is an Indian state.

And a sentence written in passive voice can include an action verb.

Nicholas O’Herlihy was named after his maternal grandfather, a Russian.

Active voice and action verbs do have one thing in common. They contribute to strong, honest, direct writing.

If the subject of a sentence creates the action, the sentence is in active voice. Active voice is the exact opposite of the sentence-wrecker known as passive voice. Here’s an example of passive voice:

The truck was struck by the train.

The truck is the subject of the sentence. The train is the receiver of the action. That means the sentence is in passive voice. Here’s the same sentence in active voice:

The train struck the truck.

Now the subject has switched roles. No longer is it receiving the action. The train has become the subject, and it is creating the action. That’s active voice.

By switching to active voice we have eliminated a verb, was, and a preposition, by. Together they had made the sentence longer, 40 percent longer. This is not an unusual result of passive voice, and it is one reason good writers avoid passive voice when they can. But at least two other reasons exist for using active voice.

Take a convoluted sentence that seems to start off in several directions and ends up going nowhere. Now, take a close look at it. Chances are, the writer began writing the sentence in passive voice. Few other forms of sloppy writing produce such muddiness.

Another reason to use active voice is that it is more honest. It takes responsibility. Passive voice provides a way to avoid responsibility. At least three recent U.S. presidents—Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton and George W. Bush—have used the identical phrase in passive voice in an attempt to deflect criticism and embarrassment and to avoid responsibility:

Mistakes were made.

To the reader, that that means is, “It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t do it. Some [unnamed] official in my administration did it.”

In When Words Collide, Lauren Kessler and Duncan McDonald offer two situations in which passive voice must be used. First, passive voice is justified if the receiver of the action is more important than the creator of the action. They use this example:

A priceless Rembrandt painting was stolen from the Metropolitan Museum of Art yesterday by three men posing as janitors.

Here, the Rembrandt should remain the subject of the sentence even though it receives the action. The painting obviously is more important—more newsworthy—than the three men who stole it.

The second reason for using passive voice is if the writer has no choice. That’s when the writer does not know who or what the actor, the creator of the action, is. The example Kessler and McDonald use:

The cargo was damaged during the trans-Atlantic flight.

Air turbulence? Sabotage? Was the cargo strapped in properly? The writer doesn’t know, so the voice must be passive.

Active voice is direct, active voice is honest, active voice is economical. But mostly, active voice is considerate of readers, of their limited amount of time and of their need for clear, crisp, concise information. Passive voice is one reason many people swear off how-to books on computing, carpentry or cooking.

First, a pair of chopsticks is placed on top of a pot of water. Then, the asparagus is put inside a wicker basket and the basket is placed on top of the chopsticks. The water is brought to a boil, and the asparagus is steamed for no more than 10 minutes, so a slight crunchiness is retained.

It seems to take so long to get it out. But when you turn these instructions into commands, using active voice, they become much more crisp and clear. The writer addresses the reader directly, with “you” implied.

Place a pair of chopsticks on top of a pot of water. Put the asparagus inside a wicker basket and place the basket on top of the chopsticks. Bring the water to a boil and steam the asparagus for no more than 10 minutes, so it retains a slight crunchiness.

Next: Action Verbs and Imagery

This blog post is excerpted from Knight’s soon-to-be-published Journalistic Writing: Building the Skill; Honing the Craft