All Blog Posts Tagged 'verb' (7)

“Your writing bores me.” “I am bored by your writing.”

Not only do these two sentences demonstrate the difference between the active and passive voice but also they communicate a central reason for avoiding the passive voice.

In the active voice, the subject of the sentence does the action described by the main verb. Thus, the subject is active. In the passive voice, the action is done to the subject. Thus, the subject is passive. Passive voice is a problem for direct writing…

The basics of subject–verb agreement. The number of the subject determines the number of the verb. In other words, if the subject is plural, the verb, too, must be appropriate for plural subjects. The following samples demonstrate singular and subject verbs.

Singular Noun Samples: cat, I John, flower

Plural Noun Samples: cats, we, John and Bob, flowers…

An expert academic or technical writer needs only a few basic sentence patterns to produce easy-to-understand writing. Each of the sentence patterns below will result in clear academic or technical writing. However, do not use any one pattern more than twice in a row to prevent the writing from sounding repetitive and boring. Also,…

Concise writing is clear writing. By definition, concise writing communicates in as few words as necessary. Everything in a sentence other than the subject, verb, and object is description. Descriptions cause most of the “fluff” in sentences, but, fortunately, some simple strategies will help you write concise descriptions.

Simplifying…

What are nominalizations?

Nominalizations are the noun forms of action verbs, as seen here:

Sample action verbs - Corresponding nouns

illustrate – illustration

fail – failure

react – reaction

announce – announcement

increase (v.) – increase (n.) 

Why are they bad, and how do I fix them?

Nominalizations have…

Active and Passive Voice: When you are active, you do something. When you are passive, things happen to you. This is the same concept as the active and passive voice in sentences.

In the active voice, the subject performs the action described by the main verb. In the passive voice, the action…

When I was in college, I worked behind the front desk of a major hotel. Directly across the lobby was the hotel bar, a small, dark lounge with the bar counter on the opposite side and a stage at one end. George Thorogood, when he stayed at the hotel, would sit at the far end of the counter, next to the stage. 

Connie, the bartender, once told me that her job was to…