What a Word! Part 7: Be

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.

What a Word! Part 6: Re-sign

When I saw someone write, I will resign my contract because I received a significant salary increase, I knew it was time to discuss the value of knowing the difference between resign and re-sign.

If you resign a contract, you quit it; if you re-sign a contract, you sign it again. Quite a difference. 

The presence of a hyphen in re-sign gives us plenty to think about. Hyphens are often used for new words. I am not old enough to remember when today was spelled to-day (no one is), but I am old enough to recall when nondisabled and email used hyphens, as in non-disabled and e-mail. They were fledgling words that didn't sound weird but looked it. Then once a word becomes so commonplace that even our grandfather would know it—and I am a grandfather!—we gladly drop the hyphen in favor of a more fluid spelling. Yet the general rule that we don't need a hyphen after re except when the next letter is an e does not always work. In the case of re-sign, we hyphenate it simply to avoid confusing it with resign, which has quite the opposite meaning.  

What a Word! Part 5: Have, Has, Had

Often enough I hear uninformed people tell me that have, has, and had are passive verbs. These forms of the same verb have several meanings, but passive is not one of them. They can have meanings as individual transitive verbs or as an auxiliary verb to indicate the past, present, and future perfect tenses.  

As transitive verbs, have, has, and had can mean, among many other things:

• to possess (I have a laptop.)
• to include (The building has three apartments.)
• to be obligated (She had to go to work.)

As auxiliary verbs, have, has, and had need a past participle form of another verb to make the perfect tense:

• past perfect: I had chosen Virginia as my teammate before you did.
• present perfect: He has bought the sailboat.
• future perfect: By tomorrow, they will have worked on the job for two weeks.

The confusion of these words with passive voice is understandable. Passive voice also needs a past participle, but one that is accompanied by the verb to be (am, are, is, was, were, being, been):

• past: Virginia was chosen as my teammate.
• present: The sailboat is being bought.
• future: By tomorrow, the job will have been worked on for two weeks.

But have, has, and had are not in and of themselves passive!  

What a Word! Part 4: Aggressive

Continuing with the theme of word meaning depends on context, I recall two people in one of my classes, Bob and Eve, getting aggressive over the use of an aggressive tone. Bob said that as a salesperson he never wants to use an aggressive tone, as it would put off his clients. Eve disagreed, saying that as a manager facing multiple deadlines, she needs to write with an aggressive tone at times.  

Seeing the argument at an impasse, I said, "Let's look up aggressive. Maybe you're both right." Using Dictionary.com, I read the first definition: "characterized by or tending toward unprovoked offenses, attacks, invasions, or the like; militantly forward or menacing." So Bob was indisputably correct. Then I read the second definition: "Making an all-out effort to win or succeed; competitive." Now Eve was undeniably on target. 

Be careful when framing the context for using aggressive, as you would not want an aggressive response.

What a Word! Part 3: Lack

The word lack poses problems similar to shall/should. What we mean by lack depends on the context. 

We jokingly may say that someone is lacking social skills because he wipes the food from his mouth onto his shirtsleeve. Here we mean he is deficient in but not devoid of social skills, because if he had no social skills he would be eating shirtless at the dining table. But at least he knew that he had to be dressed to eat with mixed company, so he has some social skills, if not many, and lack means not enough.

When we tell a child that humans lack gills so they can't breathe without assistance underwater like fish do, we mean we have zero gills. In this case lack means not at all.

Let's look at a business example. A supervisor of six operators might email her manager, "I'm lacking staff this morning." The manager would not know whether she is only one staff down (not enough) or six staff down (not at all). The supervisor would do better to write, "I am down two staff."

Finally let's look at the case of receiving a bounced $100 check. The bank might say, "The account lacks funds." In this situation, the check recipient does not if the account has $0.00 or $99.99 because she still gets nothing. The writer of the check would say he had insufficient funds, but the receiver of the check would say she received no funds.

There's a moral here. Don't use lack unless you are sure that your readers would lack a reason to misinterpret your meaning.   

What a Word! Part 2: Shall / Should

A simple dictionary review of shall and should would keep most writers away from using these words. So many times people have told me that shall means obligated and should means optional. They are right and, unfortunately, so wrong. 

In grammar, should is nothing more than the past tense. To express the past tense of I shall leave soon, I would say I told her I should leave soon. So no difference, right?

After mere grammar, things get complicated. In legal documents shall does mean obligated, as in The contractor shall complete the job by August 31. After law, the differences between shall and should depend on context. You might say, I shall go to the beach today, meaning you plan to go, but are not obligated to go, to the beach. On the other hand, the spiritual We Shall Overcome is undoubtedly an imperative. 

Now let's look at should. If I say as your subordinate, We should start the job now, I am actually asking for your permission, so no obligation to you there. But if you, again as my manager, said the same sentence, I am taking your meaning as a must.

Better to make your meaning precise by using a word like must when you mean obligation, and may, might, or can when you mean possibility. 

What a Word! Part 1: Torpid

Since the name of this blog is WORDS ON THE LINE and I've already written plenty about sentences here over the past 16 years, I thought it was time to write about words. Here is the first sentence in a June 11, 2021 Reuters article "Wall Street Ekes Out Gains to Close a Languid Week" by Stephen Culp: 

U.S. stocks closed modestly higher at the end of a torpid week marked with few market-moving catalysts and persistent concerns over whether current inflation spikes could linger and cause the U.S. Federal Reserve to tighten its dovish policy sooner than expected.

The title uses languid and the first sentence torpid instead of the more familiar lethargic, slow-moving, sluggish, or stagnant. Mr. Culp had other choices as well. While plain language advocates may prefer a commonly used word, we must remember that plain language also means reader-appropriate language. The audience of stock market articles tends to be highly educated and well-read, so the writer selected wisely, not to mention his choice of catalysts, a crossover word from chemistry to popular culture, and dovish, whose contextual roots are in politics. Here is a case of the writer trusting his audience's frames of reference.