Comments on: Eliminate Weak Verbs Once & For All

By: Calculated Spending

Calculated Spending — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 03:13:13 +0000

In every writing class I have taken, the teachers stress this point over and over. Using strong action verbs truly create clear copy.

I use the highlighter method, and it forces me to be more creative in my writing.

By: To be or Not To Be « Archer Media's Blog

To be or Not To Be « Archer Media's Blog — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 00:02:31 +0000

[...] be or Not To Be I came across a great blog post the other day, which we should all incorporate in to our writing— eliminating weak verbs, such as [...]

By: To be or Not to be | March Communications

To be or Not to be | March Communications — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 13:29:14 +0000

[...] came across a great blog post the other day, which we should all incorporate in to our writing— eliminating weak verbs, such as [...]

By: Neil Crump

Neil Crump — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 15:14:16 +0000

Nice tip – sure that I use lots of lazy verbs in my blog (probably a bit sharper in copy for clients – I hope).

Just found your blog and looking forward to following you.

Neil

By: Mike M

Mike M — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 16:51:24 +0000

I edit short business articles for a few newsletters and web site, you just described my nemesis. The articles invariably come to me in MS Word, so I use FIND to grab all the "to be" forms first and then work through cleaning. I go back and run my FIND again to ensure I didn't make the problem worse.

By: Tiffany Gallicano

Tiffany Gallicano — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 18:50:57 +0000

Great topic -- my tip for correcting passive voice is to identify why the sentence is passive.

Are you missing the actor? Example: "The blog was written" (by whom?)

Are you missing an action? Example: "The computer is new" (put "new" in front of "computer" and make a new sentence).

Another scenario is to have a "to be" verb followed by "ing" in which case you can remove the "to be" verb and the "ing." Example: "We are swimming" gets changed to "We swim."

By: Nicole

Nicole — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 14:57:38 +0000

You provided some great tips. I will definitely try them the next time I write for both school and work.

I blogged about your post on my work's blog, http://prnonsense.marchpr.com/

Thanks Kelli!

By: Erika

Erika — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 01:44:17 +0000

I wish MBA students were required to take a writing class! It's hard to get back into writing when you haven't done it for a few years. Keep posting writing tips, they are extremely helpful!

By: Margy

Margy — Sat, 30 May 2009 17:40:42 +0000

“Its all in the verbs,” said a reporter friend-of-mine long ago. More highlighters are on my shopping list.