Legal Writing

Ruth Walker, writing in The Christian Science Monitor, said:

Look what's happening to verbs--the "muscles" of language. They're being crowded out by more sedate linking-verb constructions. . . . "He lost his job" often loses out to "He became unemployed." Instead of "Ace Insurance Agency serves the maritime industry," we often get "Ace is a provider of insurance services to the maritime industry."

This week, as you revise, look for sedated verbs, verbs that have been changed to adjectives or nouns (often with suffixes like -tion or -ship or -ment), leaving only a to-be verb in their place. Wake those sedated verbs up.