“Weak” Verbs Aren’t

From Patricia Wrede’s blog: “Weak” verbs aren’t

AND THANK YOU, PATRICIA WREDE, because first, I’m right there with you, and second, I’m happy you’re not being all wambly and maybe-sorta-kinda about this opinion.

I thought the nonsense about “weak verbs” in fiction died some time during the pandemic. Apparently, I was wrong; somebody helpfully forwarded a list of “weak verbs you should never use in your writing” recently.

So this falls into the general category of Bad Writing Advice, and particularly into the ever-popular category of Bad PROSCRIPTIVE Writing Advice. Don’t use adverbs. Don’t use adjectives. Don’t use passive voice. Don’t use fake subjects like “there” at the beginning of sentences. You know what, just take a moderate to enormous chunk of the English language and THROW IT AWAY because I’m sure it wasn’t doing anything important and who needs adverbs anyway? OR WEAK VERBS. Down with be and is and was!

Here’s Patricia Wrede:

The first problem with talking about “weak verbs” is that it’s actually a grammatical term, not one of writing craft. Grammatically, a weak verb is one that ends in -ed, -t, or -d in the past tense.” (In English, anyway.)

In other words, “weak verbs” are regular verbs. One of the most interesting things about this definition is that the verb that is most commonly cited as being the ultimate “weak” verb—to be—does not fit it. Grammatically, “was” fits the definition of a strong verb.

And I did not expect her to say that, and actually I am delighted to discover that “was” is by definition a STRONG verb. Take that, bad writing advice!

Yet “to be” is almost always at the top of the “forbidden” list. Some places list every verb form explicitly—not just “to be,” but is, was, were, am, are, be, been, being… Honestly, people, “to be” covers it. The do-not-use list also regularly includes “to have,” “to do,” and often “to go,” “to become,” “to give,” “to look,” “to feel,” “to make,” and “to get.”

In other words, these lists of “weak verbs” include a lot of the most common verbs in English. (I suspect that’s part of the issue, but more on that later.) These verbs are variously termed “repetitive, passive, wordy, boring, generic, and too general.” No one ever seems to point out how useful they are.

In their eagerness to banish the copulative, these folks nearly always either forget that “to be” is a necessary part of the progressive tenses, or else they include all progressive tenses under their idiotic prohibition. “When she walked in, he was shrieking at his cell phone” is not the same as “When she walked in, he shrieked at his cell phone.” And just try removing all forms of “to be” from Hamlet’s soliloquy…

Goodness, look at this, I’m basically just copying in the entire post. The whole thing is great, especially the bit about “their idiotic prohibition,” and I did say that I was happy Wrede was not being tentative or cautious in her condemnation of this notion.

Fine, I’ll stop there, and I do suggest you click through and read the rest of the post, which includes defense of the passive voice and other useful features (NOT BUGS) of the English language.