How to Eliminate “To-Be” Verbs in Writing
Every English teacher has a sure-fire revision tip that makes developing writers dig down deep and revise initial drafts. One of my favorites involves eliminating the “to-be-verbs”: is, am, are, was, were, be, being, and been.
At this point, even before I begin to plead my case, I hear the grumbling of the contrarians. One of them mutters a snide, rhetorical question: Didn’t Shakespeare say “To be, or not to be: that is the question:”? He used three “to-be” verbs right there! If it’s good enough for Shakespeare, it’s good enough for me. True, but Will used only six more “to-be” verbs in Hamlet’s next 34 lines. My goals are to convince teachers to help their students reduce, not eliminate the “to-be” verbs, and so write with greater precision and purpose. There. I just used a “to-be” verb. Feeling better?
What’s So Wrong with “To-Be” Verbs?
1. The “to-be” verbs: is, am, are, was, were, be, being, been are state of being verbs, which means that they unduly claim a degree of permanence. For example, “I am hungry.” For most Americans, hunger is only a temporary condition.
2. The “to-be” verbs claim absolute truth and exclude other views. “Classical music is very sophisticated.” Few would agree that all classical compositions are always sophisticated.
3. The “to-be” verbs are general and lack specificity. A mother may tell her child, “Be good at school today.” The more specific “Don’t talk when the teacher talks today” would probably work better.
4. The “to-be” verbs are vague. For example, “That school is great.” Clarify the sentence as “That school has wonderful teachers, terrific students, and supportive parents.”
5. The “to-be” verbs often confuse the reader about the subject of the sentence. For example, “It was nice of you to visit.” Who or what is the “It?”
Adapted from Ken Ward’s E-Prime article at http://www.trans4mind.com/personal_development/GeneralSemantics/KensEPrime.htm
Problem-Solving Strategies to Eliminate the “To-Be” Verb
1. Substitute-Sometimes a good replacement just pops into your brain. For example, instead of “That cherry pie sure is good,” substitute the “to-be” verb is with tastes as in “That cherry pie sure tastes good.”
2. Rearrange-Start the sentence differently to see if this helps eliminate a “to-be” verb. For example, instead of “The monster was in the dark tunnel creeping,” rearrange as “Down the dark tunnel crept the monster.”
3. Change another word in the sentence into a verb-For example, instead of “Charles Schulz was the creator of the Peanuts cartoon strip,” change the common noun creator to the verb created as in “Charles Schulz created the Peanuts cartoon strip.”
4. Combine sentences-Look at the sentences before and after the one with the “to-be” verb to see if one of them can combine with the “to-be” verb sentence and so eliminate the “to-be” verb. For example, instead of “The child was sad. The sensitive young person was feeling that way because of the news story about the death of the homeless man,” combine as “The news story about the death of the homeless man saddened the sensitive child.”
A Teaching Plan to Eliminate the “To-Be” Verb
1. Post a list of the “to-be” verbs and the problem-solving strategies/examples listed above for student reference.
2. Share the strategies one at a time, so as not to overwhelm students. Teach and practice only one strategy before moving on to another strategy.
3. Start with teacher think-alouds of the revision process, using the selected strategy on student writing samples.
4. Then, turn the revision chore on over to the whole class with student writing samples.
5. Next, collect student writing samples, type them up, and have students individually complete this “to-be” revisions assignment. Correct whole class and commend the variety of effective revisions.
6. Next, have students revise their own sentences from their own writing samples, using the selected strategy.
After teaching and practicing all four strategies, set the “rule” that from now on only one “to-be” verb is allowed in any paragraph (excluding direct quotes). Use peer editing to help identify the “to-be” verbs and peer tutors to help struggling students.
Teaching the strategies and practicing them in the context of student writing samples will help students recognize and avoid these “writing crutches” in their own writing. The end result? More precise and purposeful student writing with vivid, “show me” verbs.
Also see How to Teach Helping Verbs for similar strategies to improve student writing.
Find essay strategy worksheets, writing fluencies, sentence revision activities, remedial writing lessons, posters, and editing resources to differentiate essay writing instruction in Teaching Essay Strategies at www.penningtonpublishing.com. Also, why not make sense of grammar instruction with a curriculum that will help you efficiently integrate grammar into writing instruction? Throw away your ineffective D.O.L. openers and last-minute grammar test-prep practice, and teach all the grammar, mechanics, and spelling that most students need in 75 minutes per week. Teaching Grammar and Mechanics, provides a coherent scope and sequence of 64 no-prep Sentence Lifting lessons with Teacher Tips and Hints for the grammatically-challenged. The mechanics and grammar skills complement those found in the 72 TGM Worksheets and target the diagnostic needs indicated by the multiple-choice TGM Grammar and Mechanics Diagnostic Assessments.
This is wonderful. I plan on using it with my English 101 students at the community college where I teach.
This information is extremely helpful. Being an AP student we are working on forming complex sentences and cutting down on the ” to be” verbs. This can really help any student to understand the basics on eliminating the verbs. I will definately share this with friends in school. Thanks a lot.
The only difficulty I found with this when seeking and destroying ‘to be’ verbs in my YA novel, Lethal Inheritance was that some of the simple changes like, ‘she was over it’ into ‘she felt over it’ didn’t work for the ‘voice’ of the character, so I didn’t change them. Other than that, kind of thing destroying the ‘wases’ really helped the writing.
I’m a college student taking a fiction writing class and my teacher repeats over and over, “Don’t use to be verbs!” I had NO idea what those were, and this article helped immensely. Thanks so much!
You’re welcome. Pass on the link to your professor.
Thanks so much for posting this! I’m in Pre-AP English 2 and my teacher is making us revise an essay by cutting out 90% of our to-be verbs. I was so confused, but this made it easier.
I am a free-lance writer who just started writing for publications again after a few years of rest. Those “to be” verbs popped up everywhere in an article I just completed and I felt adrift, with no solution. This information is wonderful! Easy to understand and apply. I am certain my writing will improve – thanks!
Glad it helps! Pass along the site to your teacher. He or she will thank you…
How to revise something like “if a story meets these three criteria, then it is literature” without using passive voice?
Three criteria classify a story as literature. Come on, give us a hard one:)
@Mark Pennington
that has a completely different meaning.
Maybe a shade different. How about “For (As) literature, a story must meet three criteria.” The point is not to always eliminate passive voice, it IS one technique to reduce dependence upon over-used “to-be” verbs. Of course, in some contexts, passive voice is preferred to demonstrate objectivity.
Thank you
“My goals are to convince teachers to help their students reduce, not eliminate the “to-be” verbs, and so write with greater precision and purpose.”
What’s the title of the article?
Just poking fun at the irony. Thanks for the piece.
So, how would you define “to be” so a 3rd or 4th grader would understand?
Thank you so much for this! I’m an english student and my teacher doesn’t allow to be verbs in any of our writing. Though in some situations cutting out a to be verb without making the sentence structure really awkward is very difficult! Ex. The main idea of the poem is the connection between ect. ect.”
I find it very hard to eradicate to be verbs form sentences like that.
Great question. I would not define them; just provide examples. Save the “state of being” words for older students.
I am in Honors American Lit. right now and my teacher has told us we can not include to be verbs within our writing. But i havwe found it difficult to remove them in sentences like ” It is Hester’s fault”.
Suggest you drop the “It is” and “There are” sentence starters.
Thank you so much for writing this article. I am in honors english and my teacher hates “to be” verbs. My class gets points taken off of our essays if “to be” verbs are included in them. It is really frustrating to try and eliminate these verbs–especially if you do not know what all of them are! This article really helped and I will pass on the link to my teacher.
Great article. One of my high school English teachers often grated against this style.
Any suggestions to avoiding “would”, “should”, etc. in the future tense? I find writing about what a group/ person will do or plans to do trends toward repetitiveness for me.
A caution: when attempting to avoid ‘to be’ declensions, avoid ‘verbing’ a noun. Rowling is an author. She wrote the Potter series. She did not ‘author’ them.
First, your problems aren’t necessarily problems.
1) The first problem you identify with “to-be” verbs is not a problem. It is quite legitimate to say “I am hungry” even if you’ll be full in an hour. At the time you say it, you are hungry. What if a child says, “I am five years old”? Would you prefer them to say, “I feel five years old”? Regardless of whether a state of being is permanent or temporary, it still exists at the time of feeling it.
2) “Classical music is often sophisticated.” Problem solved. Also, “Classical music has a sophisticated structure.” is just as truth-claiming, even without the “to-be” verb.
3) & 4) Are the same point. Lacking specificity is the same as being vague. “To-be” verbs, like all verbs, are as specific or vague as the rest of the sentence allows. “This school is the highest-scoring school on all measures of academic excellence and student satisfaction.”
5) “It had been raining.” Who or what is the “It”? The problem is not the verb, it’s the indefinite pronoun.
Second, your solutions aren’t necessarily solutions. (There’s that pesky “to-be” verb again!)
1) This is okay. (“Is”!)
2) You’ve removed the “to-be” verb by creating a more complex sentence. Most people wouldn’t write “The monster was in the dark tunnel creeping,” anyway. This is a false problem. At worst, they would write, “The monster was creeping in the dark tunnel,” which includes “was”, but only as part of the past progressive tense. However, a better solution to your manufactured problem is, “The monster crept down the tunnel.”
3) This is acceptable. (“Is”!)
4) Again, you’ve created a false problem. The two sentences in your example have more problems than merely a bad use of “to-be” verbs.
You had to go out of your way to create artificially bad problems which we would never encounter in most writing. “To-be” is not the problem you make it out to be.
This looks simply like some rant about somebody’s person peeve. Yes, over-use of “to-be” verbs can be boring and indicative of problems. However, the solution is not to replace ALL “to-be” verbs without judgement!
Algernon, you have some valid points; however, you fail to pay attention to the audience of this article. This post addresses a problem that teachers face: the overuse of “to be” verbs. Additionally, no one says that student writers (or anyone else) should eliminate all “to be” verbs. The last paragraph of the article mentions a good guideline: one per paragraph. That seems reasonable.
By the way, you used seven “to be” verbs in your first paragraph. Physician, heal thyself
Who decided “to be” verbs were bad in the first place? Honestly, for decades it’s perfectly acceptable to use passive voice when speaking or writing – now the use of passive voice is viewed as unacceptable. Just like the expression “went missing”, what exactly does that mean? If someone went someplace, it usually indicates they did so willingly, but the expression “went missing”, in it’s truest form, is not used in that fashion. Sometimes change for the sake of change makes little, if any sense. So I repeat my initial question/statement; what is so wrong with using passive voice in writings of today?
Of course, passive voice is really another discussion. “To be” verbs don’t necessitate use of passive voice. However, since it has been brought up by you, passive voice is not often found in my own prose. No wonder.
I particularly find irritating the mandated use of passive voice in educational research. I’ve never been convinced that passive voice divorces the social scientist from the experimental design and findings. How silly.
Wow, I just came across this page while searching for some resources to give to our translators/writers to help them cut down on their “to be” usage. It IS a great resource!
“Who decided “to be” verbs were bad in the first place?”
To be verbs are not “bad” by themselves. But their repetition weakens the writing and puts the reader to sleep.
My English teacher sent us this link and it explains to-be verbs so well! Thanks mrs b!
Thank you so much for this in-depth article. I have been working (and looking for ways to word things differently) on a similar item myself to help me get better in my writing and to help other authors looking for publication.
Hopefully, one day younger students won’t be taught to write using these types of verbs and then they they can build the correct habits from the beginning.