How “To Be” Verbs Work

Forms of “to be” include am, is, and are in the present tense as well as other forms such as the past-tense was and were, and then the forms that combine with other words such as will be and would be.

“To be” verbs can carry a lot of weight. They point to fundamentals: existence, identity, and connection. We call a living creature a being, and we describe ourselves and others by connecting their natures with “to be” verbs. Saying that you like to eat vegetables becomes more fundamental when it becomes a way of being in “I am a vegetarian.” The verb am--like other forms of "to be"--involves a claim to something large and essential.

If “to be” verbs have so much power, why do editors and teachers so often ask writers to use them less? You can think of the issue in three related ways:

  1. Routinely using “to be” verbs saps their force. If everything is something else, “to be” loses its special power to define and connect your ideas. Having lost that power, your writing has a double problem. On the one hand, overusing "to be" will cause too many sentences to get stuck in definition and sameness. On the other hand, when you do want a forceful statement of definition or identity, the “to be” statement will blend in with all the others instead of signaling a moment of unusual significance.

  2. Being doesn't tell stories. “I am a vegetarian” carries meaning, but it does not tell a story. “I became a vegetarian in 2011,” on the other hand, gets a story rolling. It implies transformation, with more action verbs to follow. That sense of development animates analytical writing, too. Writing analytical essays involves telling the stories of ideas, and you can get your reader engaged in those stories with varied, interesting verbs.

  3. If you use the same verb too often, other words have to do the work of verbs. The action of sentences needs to come from somewhere, so it will creep into nouns and adverbs. "The sculptor molds the clay" becomes "The sculptor is molding the clay" or even "The sculptor is engaged in the process of the molding of clay." As a result, your prose will contain phrases of many words that could function more effectively as a single, striking verb.

You may understand these problems intellectually but still have trouble seeing alternatives to “to be” verbs. Let's talk strategy.