When I suggest using action verbs in place of being verbs for greater clarity, I am not saying to never use being verbs. As I mentioned in a previous WORDS ON THE LINE post, being verbs (e.g., am, are, is, was, were, be, being, been) have their place in excellent writing. We need to use to be in continuous tense, as in I am running for mayor, or in general statements where a copulative will do, such as She is an engineer or He is Australian.
Nevertheless, using action verbs makes our writing more precise, more clear. Let's revisit those three to be examples in the previous paragraph. Instead of writing I am running for mayor, I can make am running a noun and find a more exact action verb, such as By running for mayor, I plan to transform our town into a more economically vibrant community. Rather than write She is an engineer, I could choose the more informative She graduated from Cornell University with an industrial engineering degree. And I can skip past the man's national identity (He is Australian) toward a more purposeful He lives in Australia but works for a Chinese company.
I raise the action-verb-over-being-verb issue because we tend toward laziness as writers when over-relying on ambiguous being verbs. So here's the tip: Substitute being verbs for action verbs, unless you are sure that the being alternative is just what you want to say.
