The issue I'm going to focus on this week is rule 18 on Chelsi's Political Cartoon Analysis Grading Key. Rule 18 states: Try to avoid "to be" verbs in your writing. Review the rules about active / passive voice.
In active voice sentences, the verb expresses the action in the sentence, the subject performs the action, and the object is the recipient of the action. Active sentences follow the pattern: subject-verb-object.
Jill kicked Jack.
In a passive voice sentence, the subject and object flip-flop. The subject becomes the passive recipient of the action.
Jack was kicked by Jill.
My issue was I put "has" "had" "were" in several of my sentences. One of my sentences was "What has caused this massive collapse..." I deleted has and it sounds much better. "What caused this massive collapse..." Sounds much better, right?
Michael
Yes mike it does sound better without the extra word. your post is a lot like my grammer post on ending with a preposition, you should check it out if you want to.
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