When is the "To be" linking verb the strongest phrasing?

Robert Dawson · Apr 11, 2015

As "was" is past tense, why does it denote a current action?

It's a then-current action. "Ongoing" would be a better word. And inasmuch as there is a reason, I suppose it's because in "was running", "running" is a state of being - essentially a sort of adjective - seen as being of a more thingy and permanent nature than the possibly transitory verb.

To be truly paradoxical, note that things that are permanently true ("The Thames runs through London") are indicated using the same simple present as things that may be only instantaneously true. (African-American vernacular English can distinguish these unambiguously.) The present imperfect ("is running") is used for things that extend beyond the present but maybe not for long.

Bufty · Apr 11, 2015

Expect the unexpected. And I've no doubt somebody ... somewhere ... is nodding at your question, mumbling, "Good question."

It doesn't denote a current action in the sense of happening 'now'.
It tells the reader what was happening at a particular point in the story being recounted.

qwerty said:
Now here's a conundrum:
As "was" is past tense, why does it denote a current action?

No, I'm not expecting anyone to seriously answer that.

qwerty · Apr 11, 2015

Bufty said:
It doesn't denote a current action in the sense of happening 'now'.
It tells the reader what was happening at a particular point in the story being recounted.

Precisely - when the narrative is written in past tense.

I was simply querying the wordage of the author who queried the beta reader who started this thread. That author said: "was" is important because it denotes current action.

Plus, I was being naughtily facetious.

evilrooster · Apr 11, 2015

Robert Dawson said:
With great respect: the OP was asking about general usage and/or that of an unspecified other writer.

Apchelopech did not accuse the OP of laziness, etc; he said that the issue that the OP raised was laziness, etc. - that is, in general, or of the unspecified other writer. I do not see this as directed at the OP, and think the imputation of disrespect might be unwarranted.

*stands and waits for thunderbolt to strike*

apchelopech said:

I find myself chastened by this observation for I did not, in my earlier post, understand myself to be directing my remarks to the original poster or indeed to any other individual and neither was that my intent. Had I divined that such would be the interpretation of my words, I would have chosen them with greater precision and forethought. I shall in future be more circumspect.

APC

Click to expand...

You are both right. I apologize.

guttersquid · Apr 11, 2015

qwerty said:
Now here's a conundrum:
As "was" is past tense, why does it denote a current action?

No, I'm not expecting anyone to seriously answer that.

If electricity passed through a wire, that was current action.

(There, I seriously answered that.)

lizo27 · Apr 11, 2015

blacbird said:
It's been said on many other threads, but somehow no matter how often we stake this vampire, it just keeps coming back:

THE USE OF THE WORD 'WAS', OR ANY OTHER 'TO BE' VERB FORM, IS NOT AN AUTOMATIC SIGNAL OF PASSIVE VOICE.

If you harbor that idea, expunge it as fast as you can. It is complete nonsense, and anybody who gives that advice doesn't know enough about grammatical construction to be worth listening to.

caw

This should be in a banner at the top of the site. If I had a nickel for every time someone thought "to be" verbs are somehow anathema in writing, my student loans would be paid off. "To be" verbs are necessary and valid forms of speech and are not of themselves indicative of passive voice.

Robert Dawson · Apr 11, 2015

One way to think of it: Because "to be" variants are indeed essential, and because repetition tends to grate, do not use up your quota where something else will work.

And, by the way, the same is true of passive voice. Where it's needed, nothing else works as well. (See what I just did? Bringing in a dummy subject "where you/somebody/the author need it" would be clunky, because we've just added a spear carrier to the cast. "Where it's needed" cuts to the heart of the matter.) But the reader's tolerance of it is - and should be - limited. So don't use it where it's weaker, or even when it's a wash. Keep it for when you need it.

One final thought before I hand the on the talking stick: English does have a "middle voice", like Classical Greek, though it's usually not called that and not indicated by any sort of inflection. It's more usually thought of as an active voice that can't (in that sense) take an object.

Active voice: "the dwarf boils the water."
"Middle voice": "the water boils."
Passive voice: "the water is boiled [by the dwarf]."

You need a good ear to use it well, because in English some verbs do this naturally and some don't. "Cooks" can be used in middle voice but is more natural in active or passive. "Simmers" is a bit more natural in middle voice than active.

"I cook the stew: it simmers on the stove."

sounds (to me anyhow) more natural than

"I simmer the stew: it cooks on the stove."

If you don't like my rather nonstandard description, you can substitute the more usual "transitive" and "intransitive." I just like the idea that these supposedly exotic grammatical structures exist in English!

Another example (Robert, you said you were going to shut up!) Latin has a lot of "deponent verbs" that are active in meaning but passive in construction. Weird? Okay, imagine a couple (straight, male) sailors coming into port. They agree that the first priority is to "go out and get laid." Deponent verb.

Zanralotta · Apr 11, 2015

King Neptune said:
Aha!

Yeah, I should know better than to post here after opening a bottle of Merlot

I would have understood what you meant a lot better...

King Neptune · Apr 11, 2015

Zanralotta said:
Yeah, I should know better than to post here after opening a bottle of Merlot I would have understood what you meant a lot better...

Merlot is worthwhile.

CathleenT · Apr 11, 2015

Just popping in to say this is an awesome thread. Although I like white zin better than merlot. :e2drunk:

Roxxsmom · Apr 11, 2015

I think the to be, even when it's used in a truly passive construct, can be the "best" way of wording something when it creates the emphasis or mood you want. Okay, vague, I know. So compare:

The explosion threw me against the wall.

vs

I was thrown against the wall by the explosion.

The second is passive, but it emphasizes my perception of how it felt and makes me the subject of the sentence, which may be appropriate from my pov.

Or

He allowed himself to be led from the room.

This passive construct might be best if he isn't aware of who is leading him. Maybe he's just received devastating news or something and is numb with shock, and the point is to emphasize how passive he is at this moment.

I'll also sometimes use non-passive "to be" constructs in "judgement" sentences when I'm writing in pov.

For example:

Tom kicked sand at me and ran away laughing. He always was a jerk.

I know a couple of people disagree with me vehemently on this and can come up with a kajillion different ways they'd recast the sentence, but I think this sort of thing can contribute to the sense of character voice or personality in the narrative, because it sounds like something the pov character might say about the person.

So maybe it's a style thing? Where I don't like to be verbs is when there's a stronger, more evocative verb that could work instead.

For example:

The house was much taller than its neighbors.

vs

The house towered over its neighbors.

apchelopech · Apr 14, 2015

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."

If Dickens could write these immortal words using the verb to be, we mere mortals ought to be able to also.

But there's a difference between Dickens and, eg, this piece of narrative -

"Belinda was hungry. But it was too early for the town's eateries to open. And there was nowhere else to eat. She was just about to get back in the car and drive off when she heard someone calling to her. She was taken aback but looked round anyway. An old man was waving to her from across the street. She was uncertain what to do. The next town was 80 miles along the road and Belinda was sure her stomach didn't have that distance in it. And anyway, the soft snow that had started earlier was now falling much heavier."

I just made that up, to illustrate how the verb to be (principally 'was' in past tense writing) can become a default position. What's wrong with it? We the reader don't get to make our own judgment or assessment on anything that's being recounted. It's all black and white, and we have to like it or lump it.

Robert Dawson · Apr 14, 2015

Also, Dickens was deliberately writing in a repetitive, near-verse style.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, [my line breaks]
it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,
it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity,
it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness,
it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair,
we had everything before us, we had nothing before us,
we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way...

Stylistically it's like Ecclesiastes 3 ("To everything there is a season...") And a repetition that might get annoying as an unconscious writer's tic is a key part of the effect. (Which thread recently had somebody saying Dickens was a poor stylist? I'm calling BS on that one!)

blacbird · Apr 14, 2015

apchelopech said:
"Belinda was hungry. But it was too early for the town's eateries to open. And there was nowhere else to eat. She was just about to get back in the car and drive off when she heard someone calling to her. She was taken aback but looked round anyway. An old man was waving to her from across the street. She was uncertain what to do. The next town was 80 miles along the road and Belinda was sure her stomach didn't have that distance in it. And anyway, the soft snow that had started earlier was now falling much heavier."

I just made that up, to illustrate how the verb to be (principally 'was' in past tense writing) can become a default position. What's wrong with it? We the reader don't get to make our own judgment or assessment on anything that's being recounted. It's all black and white, and we have to like it or lump it.

All that said, and correctly so, this piece of writing is still not an example of "passive voice". It's just weak writing, lacking narrative energy, which is not the same thing as "passive". And the verb "was" isn't the culprit, either; it's the overuse of it in tedious sentence structures. Any one of those sentences could work well in a context of narrative with more variation in grammatical structure and more energetic verbs.

That can often be a problem here with examples of single sentences, presented out of narrative context. We should encourage posters with questions like that in the OP to present more context for their examples.

caw

Roxxsmom · Apr 14, 2015

blacbird said:
That can often be a problem here with examples of single sentences, presented out of narrative context. We should encourage posters with questions like that in the OP to present more context for their examples.

caw

Yep, and we've all learned how fraught with peril this is when we've done it and someone "corrects" your sentence so it's no longer even in the correct point of view or so it would be repeating the exact same structure as the previous or subsequent sentence in the passage.

apchelopech · Apr 17, 2015

blacbird said:
All that said, and correctly so, this piece of writing is still not an example of "passive voice". It's just weak writing, lacking narrative energy, which is not the same thing as "passive". And the verb "was" isn't the culprit, either; it's the overuse of it in tedious sentence structures. Any one of those sentences could work well in a context of narrative with more variation in grammatical structure and more energetic verbs.

But then, I wasn't trying to exemplify the 'passive voice', I was doing my bit to take this thread back to what the OP was plainly asking about, in the specific example he/she gave. Which related to the use of the verb to be as opposed to some specific action verb. And my example is weak because of overuse of the verb to be, not in spite of it - that's what makes the sentences 'tedious', as you say. Which, I suspect and at bottom, was what the OP was concerned about.

blacbird · Apr 17, 2015

apchelopech said:
But then, I wasn't trying to exemplify the 'passive voice', I was doing my bit to take this thread back to what the OP was plainly asking about, in the specific example he/she gave. Which related to the use of the verb to be as opposed to some specific action verb. And my example is weak because of overuse of the verb to be, not in spite of it - that's what makes the sentences 'tedious', as you say. Which, I suspect and at bottom, was what the OP was concerned about.

I had no intention of contradicting you or disputing you. Just that we've had a hell of a lot of threads here conflating "passive voice", a very specific grammatical construction issue, with "weak writing", a much more interpretative style issue.

Plus, as I said, with a single sentence given as an example, we have no idea if overuse is the problem, or if it might be something else. Or nothing whatever.

caw

When is the "To be" linking verb the strongest phrasing?

Robert Dawson

Getting The Hang Of It

Bufty

Where have the last ten years gone?

qwerty

exiled Brit

evilrooster

Wicked chicken

guttersquid

I agree with Roxxsmom.

lizo27

Speshul snowflake

Robert Dawson

Getting The Hang Of It

Zanralotta

King Neptune

CathleenT

I write

Roxxsmom

Beastly Fido

apchelopech

Robert Dawson

Getting The Hang Of It

blacbird

Roxxsmom

Beastly Fido

apchelopech

blacbird