To Be or Not to Be

1
To Be or Not to Be

• Verb Choice

2
What You Should Know About Verbs

• The verbs of being are indeed verbs.
• The verbs of being are am, is, are, was, were,
  be, been, am.
• Sometimes we can avoid using a verb of being
  with the ing form of a verb to strengthen our
  writing.
• Active voice can create cleaner, tighter writing.

3
Misunderstandings About Verbs

• Confusion that verbs mean only actions (there are
  the verbs of being to contend with am, is, are,
  was, were, be, been, am.
• Confusion that passive voice is the same thing as
  past tense.
• Passive Voice part of the verb be the past
  participle was received.
• Past tense received.

4
Verb Know How

• Verbs add action and movement to our writing.
• Verbs of being are important sometimes they are
  exactly what we need to convey the right meaning.
• But often the main verb will pack a more powerful
  punch if it stands alone.
• Sometimes passive voice is the right choice, but
  very often switching to active voice will make
  great improvements.

5
Active Voice

• Active Voice puts the actor or the subject of a
  sentence near the front of the sentence so it can
  do or be.
• Here is a sentence in the passive voice
• Writing is weakened by the passive voice.
• We should move the subject of the sentence up to
  the front
• The passive voice weakens writing.

6
Invitation to Notice Strong Verbs

• It was like nothing on earth we had ever seen
  before. Fred, Sam, and I stood in front of
  strange trees and giant ferns. A rocky cliff
  rose behind us. A volcano smoked ahead of us.
• It was like nothing on earth we had ever seen
  before. Fred, Sam, and I were standing in front
  of strange trees and giant ferns. A rocky cliff
  was rising behind us. A volcano was smoking
  ahead of us.

7
Revising Verbs to Show Rather than to Tell.

• It was cold. The verb in this sentence tells.
• Stepping out of the overheated car, Hector found
  himself shivering. He zipped up his flimsy nylon
  windbreaker and pulled the drawstring of the
  small hood snugly around his face although he
  knew this made him look like a turtle without a
  shell. These verbs SHOW!
• - Lynne Rae Perkins, Criss Cross (2005)

8
Combining Sentences to revise verbs of being.

• Ingrid Levin-Hill was thirteen.
• She had her birthday three weeks ago.
• She was sitting and thinking.
• She was in her orthodontists waiting room.
• Can we combine these sentences into one? How?
  Try your hand at it.

9
Revised Combined Sentence

• Ingrid Levin-Hill, a thirteen-year-old for three
  weeks, sat and thought in the orthodontists
  waiting room.
• Notice the insertion of an appositive surrounded
  by the commas.
• Notice the verbs in active voice and the
  elimination of being verbs.
• Use these strategies when instructed to revise
  your writing.

10
Appositives

• Appositives add information to sentences by
  renaming nouns (people, places, or things).
• Appositives are next to the noun they are
  renaming.
• Appositives need commas or dashes to offset them
  from the sentence.
• Commas are not used if the appositive is
  necessary to the meaning of the sentence. Use
  commas only if the appositive can be removed
  without changing the meaning.

11
Appositives

• Appositives add information to sentences by
  renaming nounsdefining or summarizing them.
• Appositives can give writers more ways to combine
  information and embed it in a sentence.

12
Appositives

• Appositive means being positioned next to
  something, and this grammatical pattern is all
  about position.
• Whether punctuated with a comma or a dash, an
  appositive should be positioned near the noun it
  describes.
• Mrs. Sullivan, the English teacher, speaks
  Pig-Latin.

13
Appositives More Examples

• Catherine the Great, my Russian grandma, is
  already awake.
• Avon, a rather small snail, read a book every
  day.
• Billybob, an editor, is brilliant.
• Sister Kathleen, our principal, visited our class
  today.

14
Invitation to Write

• Try your hand at combining these sentences using
  an appositive.
• Clementine is funny.
• She is in tenth grade.
• She lives in New York.
• You can put all of these thoughts about
  Clementine into one sentence.

15
Combined Sentence - Appositive

• Clementine, a tenth grader, lives in New York.
• Another example
• Keith, the boy in the rumpled shorts and shirt,
  did not know he was being watched as he entered
  room 215 of the Mountain View Inn.

16
Invitation to Revise

• Captain Nathan Hale was a 21-year-old
  schoolteacher just out of Yale College when he
  accepted a dangerous mission
• - Joy Hakim, The History of US From Colonies
  to Country, 1735 1791 (1993)
• CREATE A NEW VERSION OF THIS SENTENCE USING AN
  APPOSITIVE.

17
Revised Version

• Captain Nathan Hale, a 21-year-old schoolteacher
  just out of Yale College, accepted a dangerous
  position.

18
Uncovering How Writers Communicate with Readers

• Franks house looked like it had been drawn by a
  kindergartner with only two crayons, lime green
  and sunflower.
• Franks house looks like it was drawn by a
  kindergartner with only two crayons, lime green
  and sunflower.
• Franks house looked like it had been drawn by a
  kindergartner with only two crayons, lime green
  and sunflower.
• Franks house looked like it had been drawed by a
  kindergartner with only two crayons, lime green
  and sunflower.
• Franks house looked like it had been drawn by a
  kindergartner with only two Crayons, lime green
  and sunflower.