hello and welcome to the lecture on the writing process part two uh this is a lecture that is going to delve a little bit deeper from the first lecture uh from part one into uh the use of verbs and finding action now this might be getting a little bit more detailed than what you were hoping for but but i think i think give this lecture a chance because this can revolutionize your the way that you write and and it all has to do or most of it has to do with the use of verbs and and how we use action verbs in our sentences so i'm gonna i'm just gonna start with the very basics here which you know what is a verb verbs express action uh occurrences or states of being and you know in that you know in simple sentences like you know john ran to work this morning i wrecked the car last night we drank all the tea last night or you know latino walked the dog you know you know walked drank wrecked and ran are all verbs and and with transitive verbs uh are you know shows an action from the subject uh which is the actor and and the direct object so so so the subject acts upon the direct object uh that i drove to the store um and and this promotes uh the use of active voice now active voice is something that apa has been promoting for at least two editions now sixth edition and now the seventh edition active voice is a much it's the much more preferable uh voice to uh write in versus uh just the passive voice um but and and really it's the transitive verbs that that we want to stay with now copula verbs copulative verbs are verbs that usually uh uh uh a verb these are this is a verb that usually patterns with a modifier or a noun uh necessary to complete the sentence so and and there's two types of copula verbs there's there's verbs of being and linking verbs now we're going to talk about both now linking verbs you don't really want to use either but verbs of being are the ones that that i really want to focus on today and for this lecture and and uh let me show you what they are verbs of being are consist of the words am is are was were has had have be being been do does did now for simple sentences these are these are fine to use because these are simple they're small and and there's really no other way to say a lot or or structure these sentences other than to use verbs of being such as the grass is green you know the party was loud we were there before things like that but for more complex sentences verbs of being should be avoided because it puts the direct objects before the subject so an example of that would be the client was given the assessment by the counselor rather than the counselor gave the assessment to the client or the counselor gave the client the assessment uh so and and really and and this is this this this uh you know verbs of being do promote the use of passive voice um self-esteem has been defined by researchers as and then it goes on from there you know participants were administered the test by the researchers the survey was distributed by the researcher to all people on the internet list now the thing is is that verbs of being due to do two things uh it promotes or demonstrates even a sense of wordiness in your writing it because it takes more words to write in passive voice than an active voice and it also takes the power from the subject so the subject in this sentence should really be the researchers the researchers you know researchers define self-esteem as or uh uh or even researchers are again in this one you know that that the researchers administered uh the test to the participants or gave the you know the the uh the test to the participants and and and well i guess research might be the other uh i guess these are all researcher uh uh uh based uh sentences but but what it does it like i said it demonstrates wordiness and it takes the power from the subject and really passive voice is is usually only appropriate when you want to focus on the object over the subject like the president was shot the electrodes were attached to the participant though those are you know those are few and far between but you know that might be a use of active voice that's okay now i'm going to give you some other examples of how active voice can be good as well or can be used as well in a minute um but if if you know an apa does you know it's not like apa says you can't use verbs of being in your in your writing but if you use them to a lesser amount you will be using you will be uh activating your voice using active voice and you will be using less words to convey the same point that you would have made with with more words passive voice and and remember we want to write you know precisely concisely and clearly and and and taking out verbs of being in your in your writing will help do that now what when are verbs of being used best okay so there's two there's two there's two places that that i think that verbs of being can uh that are there are appropriate when you're describing possession within a sentence so for example the researchers had three results now it doesn't mean that you can't replace a verb over you know the verb of being had with something else like the researchers found through results that's a little bit more descriptive and and it's probably a better fit now you can also use a verb of being when describing a negative the researchers did not find significant results that's fine uh because it's describing a negative and and that might be the best way to say that now sometimes you might be able to get around using the verb of being using another word maybe not such as if you use the researchers failed to find significant results i wouldn't say that's any better because that that implies that the researchers failed like they there were significant results and the researchers failed to find them uh maybe you know maybe there just were not so so this isn't very clear and it's not very uh concise uh in terms of you you're not i don't think you're you're stating what you really mean by by putting the researchers failed uh but if if you put the researchers did not find significant results that that's that's okay so you might be asking yourself well geez am i never supposed to write in passive voice ever again do i have to write an active voice all the time well no that's not that's not what i'm saying what we need to do as writers is we need to find a balance between active and passive voice that you know that we that we use them both at this uh concurrently we use them uh at the same time within a paper that's going to contribute to the rhythm and texture of your writing because if if you find that balance uh you know you got to have a back and forth with them and if you find the balance it will help your writing um you know too much of either if you know if you get too much into the weeds you know if you have like uh you know all passive voice or all active voice it will sound awkward i remember i wrote a manuscript for publication and and i and i wrote it purely in the active voice i did not use one verb of being and it was all active voice first of all that was kind of hard to do second of all it did it sounded it sounded awkward and it sounded too sterile you need both my ideal ratio is to have a 70 30 uh split 70 active voice 30 passive you keep just enough in there to keep that that rhythm and that texture within your writing to keep the the reader's attention now your ratio might be a little different and that's okay because we all have our own way of writing so you gotta find that and i'd encourage you to you know the next time that you write a paper to try to figure out where is where is that ratio for you okay i'm gonna i'm gonna delve into linking verbs quickly uh they're also copula verbs just like the verbs of being they you know they require a subject complement to complete the sentence uh linking verbs consist of uh you know these are some of them like look appear become grow remain seem for simple sentences the once again these are okay uh you know the children looked tired from playing all day the meat tasted rotten the boat appeared to be sinking you know this is also good for like literary you know for literature maybe not for scientific writing uh for complex sentences maybe use a little caution when using them linking verbs suggest the wrong or open up the realm of possibility rather than absolute and and that's not what you want in scientific writing so if somebody if you're reading an article and they were describing the the procedures of a study and and they wrote that the participants appeared finished with the survey you would ask yourself well were they finished or weren't they that you know it sounds wishy-washy uh or the results of the study looked like they supported the previous literature well did they or didn't they you should know that so you want to stay away from linking verbs as as well i think especially within uh scientific writing ap style writing prepositional phrases these modify nouns and verbs while indicating various relationships between subjects and verbs now i i like prepositional phrases but i like them uh in certain at certain times in certain ways uh they are used you know to color and inform sentences in powerful ways prepositions are you know these are just a few of on in after like on the ceiling of the participants after the events what however when they're linked with verbs of being that's when things are going to start getting confusing so let me show you this here's here's a formula that has verbs of being in prepositional phrases so if you start a sentence with a prepositional phrase and then it goes to a verb of being and then back to another prepositional phrase and then back to a verb of being and then back to it and then ending the sentence in a prepositional phrase you've got one or two things one of two things you either have legal speak or you have a sentence that's really confusing and i think there's you know there's uh they're both the same thing really but with this new perspective these patterns must be taken out of your of your writing now or and and that's the the you know using this formula that's what this sentence is saying or you could just say writers should avoid these patterns do you do you see the difference i hope you do because if you see and with this new perspective these patterns must be taken out you know be taken the verb of being out of your writing you know ends with a prepositional phrase so it starts with a prepositional phrase that ends with one has a verb of being right in the middle of a sentence super confusing now the paramedic method for activating your voice number one uh find all the prepositions in a sentence so so go like i would go through write your rough draft of a paper and then go back and look for the uh for the prepositions find the verbs of being that that are in your sentence find the action verb within within your sentences convert or flip if you have to flip the action verb and make it transitive and then uh and and then and then maybe cut out prepositional phrases that start out a sentence now i wouldn't say you have to do that all the time but once again once in a while isn't going to kill you but you know but don't do it with every sentence or don't do it every third sentence you know just once in a great while you can throw in that nuance of of beginning a sentence with a prepositional phrase as long as it's not followed by a verb of being so these are some uh you know these are some nice tips or steps that you can take to clean up your writing and activate your voice now uh the rule of thumb here is that you want to say more with less and we've said you know we've talked about that before in in apa uh style writing is is that you want to be concise precise and clear and and also simplistic uh and and and you can do those things if you you know use less words activating your writing voice will you know will uh will reduce how many words you actually use it's actually it's called the lard factor and this is when you uh you know you put your your writing on a diet so what you would do is you would you would you know you would write your your rough draft and you just you would just write you would just you know just write it the way you normally do and then when you go back for the revision process you'll start to take out the the you know the prepositional phrases that start a sentence or at least couple some of them and you'll start to activate your writing by uh by moving the verb to a transitive verb and and you know and using active voice and you're going to notice that your sentence lengths are going to start to decrease so what you would do is you would take the original number of words in your rough draft in a sentence and you would revise that sentence and you would cut down on the words and you would take that and then you would count those that the new sentence and then you would you would divide it by how many words were in the original uh sentence and that would be the lard factor so here's an example the unrevised sentence is the participants were administered the post-test by the researcher once again verbs of being passive voice now let's say you revise this the researcher administered the post test to the participants okay you've only shaved off one word which is fine you have eight words on this you would take the revised uh sentence which is eight divided by nine and you would come up with uh 0.89 thus indicating that you've eliminated 11 of of of the lard from this sentence now you might be thinking what's you know what's one word well if if you're writing a 20-page paper and you do this for every sentence sometimes it's one word sometimes it's four words sometimes it's it's more and it adds up and you can really shave off pages of your paper uh simply by going back and revising it and activating your voice so here's an exercise that you can do if you want you can pause this uh uh this this narrative and you can you can maybe write out these uh uh these sentences they're all in a passive voice and uh you know and you can take out the verbs of being uh out of these and activate your voice and and uh you know turn them into an active voice sentence and then calculate the large factor for each revision to see how much you're actually saved if you want to do that okay so that's the conclusion uh i hope this lecture has been helpful to you i think that this might be the most important lecture of the entire writing series because it it introduces a different way of writing that most people don't write in the active voice but it will revolutionize your writing if you begin to do this and and you begin to to write more actively and and uh and and you're putting you know the uh you know well yeah you're just writing more in the active voice it will change how you write and it will make your writing more clear precise uh and simple and simple so okay everyone have a good day today