GRAMMAR AS RHETORIC AND STYLE Direct, Precise, and Active Verbs

Grammar as Rhetoric and Style
Direct, Precise, and Active Verbs

Direct, precise, active verbs energize writing. Consider this description with verbs in blue from “The Chrysanthemums” by John Steinbeck (p. 1147, pars. 7–8):

She brushed a cloud of hair out of her eyes with the back of her glove, and left a smudge of earth on her cheek in doing it. Behind her stood the neat white farm house with red geraniums close-banked around it as high as the windows. It was a hard-swept looking little house with hard-polished windows, and a clean mud-mat on the front steps.

Elisa cast another glance toward the tractor shed. The strangers were getting into their Ford coupe. She took off a glove and put her strong fingers down into the forest of new green chrysanthemum sprouts that were growing around the old roots. She spread the leaves and looked down among the close-growing stems. No aphids were there, no sowbugs or snails or cutworms. Her terrier fingers destroyed such pests before they could get started.

The simple verb forms and strong active verbs in Steinbeck’s description of Elisa help develop her character as confident, precise, and definitive when she works on her chrysanthemums. It is easy to visualize her and her actions as she notices, but doesn’t dwell on, the men getting into the car.

Now consider another passage, from Edith Wharton’s “Roman Fever” (p. 1127, par. 7). The verbs are in blue:

The dark lady laughed again, and they both relapsed upon the view, contemplating it in silence, with a sort of diffused serenity which might have been borrowed from the spring effulgence of the Roman skies. The luncheon-hour was long past, and the two had their end of the vast terrace to themselves. At its opposite extremity a few groups, detained by a lingering look at the outspread city, were gathering up guide-books and fumbling for tips. The last of them scattered, and the two ladies were alone on the air-washed height.

Wharton uses active and passive verbs to give a sense of the transitional nature of the scene. The last two sentences have four different action verbs, but the last part—in which the two ladies are left to the view—relies solely on a passive verb form of “to be.” The women are quite isolated from the hustle and bustle of the tourists, as that verb form suggests.

Direct Verbs

Use forms of to be and other linking verbs sparingly and with a specific reason. Often you can change a form of to be followed by a predicate adjective or a predicate noun (also called nominalization) into an action verb. Consider how the second sentence in the pairs below sports a stronger verb than the first:

The high grey-flannel fog of winter was closing off the Salinas Valley from the sky and from all the rest of the world.

The high grey-flannel fog of winter closed off the Salinas Valley from the sky and from all the rest of the world. —John Steinbeck

It is the presentation of such a “complex” instantaneously which gives that sense of sudden liberation; that sense of freedom from time limits and space limits; that sense of sudden growth, which is the experience we have in the presence of the greatest works of art.

It is the presentation of such a “complex” instantaneously which gives that sense of sudden liberation; that sense of freedom from time limits and space limits; that sense of sudden growth, which we experience in the presence of the greatest works of art. —Ezra Pound

During this period, white people were different from colored to me only in that they rode through town and never lived there.

During this period, white people differed from colored to me only in that they rode through town and never lived there. —Zora Neale Hurston

Precise Verbs

While there is nothing wrong with the verbs got and put in the first sentence below, consider the precision of the verbs in the second sentence.

He got out of bed and put on his overalls.

He eased out of bed and slipped into overalls. —Richard Wright

Similarly, in the first sentence that follows, keep and comes are perfectly serviceable verbs—until you compare them with the more precise verbs that the writer selects.

To keep a democracy of effort requires a vast amount of patience in dealing with differing methods, a vast amount of humility. But out of the confusion of many voices comes an understanding of dominant public need.

To maintain a democracy of effort requires a vast amount of patience in dealing with differing methods, a vast amount of humility. But out of the confusion of many voices rises an understanding of dominant public need.—Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Active Verbs

In addition to selecting a verb that is direct and creates a precise image, use verbs in the active voice—with an easy-to-picture subject doing something—unless you have a specific purpose for using the passive voice, where the subject is acted on. Here, for example, in a sentence from “How It Feels to Be Colored Me,” Zora Neale Hurston makes good use of the passive voice (p. 1117, par. 9):

I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background.

In this sentence, Hurston is acted on. Why? Perhaps because she wanted to create a sense of helplessness.

By and large, though, strong writers stick with the active voice, as Ernest Hemingway does when he describes what’s going on outside the café in “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” (p. 1121, par. 9):

A girl and a soldier went by in the street. The street light shone on the brass number on his collar. The girl wore no head covering and hurried beside him.—Ernest Hemingway

Hemingway could have cast that sentence in the passive voice, as follows:

They were passed by a girl and a soldier. The brass number on his collar was lit by the street light. The girl’s head was not covered and she was hurrying beside him.

As is often the case, and as this example demonstrates, use of the passive voice muddies the picture.