I’m talking about the verb to be in all its forms (be, am, are, is, was, were, being, and been). Action verbs usually offer greater clarity than being verbs. For instance, “She is a manager” makes one wonder whether she manages a corporate department, a studio production company, or a baseball team; using an action verb, as in, “She manages a team of eight systems engineers,” avoids such ambiguity. Here are other examples:
Ambiguous: Ana was an employee in our communications department.
Clearer: Ana wrote press releases and opinion pieces for our communications department.Ambiguous: Berta is ill.Clearer: Berta said that she has a cold.Ambiguous: Carmen will be a college graduate next year.Clearer: Carmen will graduate with a B.S. in psychology next year.
Of course, the verb to be has its place:
Passive Voice: Daria was paid in full for her work.
Continuous Tense: Emilia was running / is running / will be running.
Dramatic Ambiguity: To be, or not to be, that is the question.
E-Prime proponents, who call for the eradication of to be from the language, are extreme. But they do have a point about the clarity that alternative action verbs usually bring to communication.
