Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Legal Writing Blogs -> Daily Writing Tips

Legal Writing

: Daily Writing Tips

Let?s Keep Some of the Old Verb Forms

By Maeve

When it comes to some irregular verbs, I really hate to see the old past participle forms “regularized” to the dominant “-ed” ending.

Here’s an odd “regularization” of split:

Data is splitted between the protocols HTTP and FTP.

To be fair, I found this example on a site belonging to a company based in Germany. It’s a logical mistake for a non-native English speaker.

Split is one of those rare verbs that never changes its form:

Today they split the data.
Yesterday they split the data.
The data is split between protocols.
The data has been split.

This next example is from an online chat:

… the Rabbi of Bardichev…always seeked to judge Jews favorably…

As far as I can tell, the site is based in the U.S. The person who typed this sentence is well-educated. I have no way of knowing if he’s a native English speaker, but I’m pretty sure that he is. It may be that seek is undergoing the same change as slay.

I’ve often expressed my aversion to slayed as the simple past of slay, “to kill.” I much prefer the forms slay, slew, (have) slain. I’ll continue to use the old forms in my own writing, but I realize that many other writers are going with the “-ed” forms.

Unlike “slayed,” I’ve never seen “seeked” before. I hope this is just a personal aberration.

The “-ed” change has already taken place with seek’s cousin, beseech: “to beg urgently.” Both words derive from Old English secan, “visit, inquire, pursue.”
He beseeched her to change her mind raises no hackles for me, although I might still find a use for besought in my writing.

What do readers think? Should all English verbs be regularized to “-ed” forms? Or do you have old-fashioned favorites you’d hate to see make the change?

---

Copyright Daily Writing Tips: Visit the site for more writing tips!

Full post as published by Daily Writing Tips on April 02, 2008 (boomark / email).