20 3.3 Verbs

Verbs may be the most important part of speech. Why? Because every sentence has to have a verb. For example:

Stop!

That is a complete sentence. It has what is called a “you understood” subject (the subject is not written, but a command is directed at someone and we “understand” that) and it has a verb: “stop.” That’s enough to express a complete thought.

You can’t have a sentence without a verb, no matter how many words you write. For example:

The small black dog in my backyard with floppy ears and a long tail.

That’s a fragment. Why? Because it doesn’t have a verb.  Learning about verbs will also help you avoid writing sentence fragments.

What Is a Verb?

A verb shows action or a state of being. The verb in a sentence is what the subject is doing. (More about subjects in Ch. 4.1.)

Action verbs are easy: they are words like “walk,” “study,” “wash,” “wait,” and “dance.” They are words that describe something happening. For example:

The raccoon ate the old pizza box. (“ate” is what the raccoon did. “ate” is the verb.)

But after that, it gets more complicated.

A verb can also link subjects with words that describe them. Think of “linking” as an action. Common linking verbs include “is,” “am,” “are,” “was,” “seem,” “became” and “look.” For example:

Emmett is a small black dog. (“is” links the subject “Emmett” with the description “a small black dog.” Therefore “is” is a verb.)

Often a verb is one word, but a verb can also be two or more words. These are called verb phrases.  For example:

We have taken many trips together. (“have taken” is a verb phrase.)

Verb Tense

Verbs not only tell us what is happening, they tell us when it is happening. This is called verb tense. For example:

• I walk to school. (present tense: I am doing it now.)
• I walked to school. (past tense: I used to do it.)
• I will walk to school. (future tense: I am going to do it.)

When the action is happening is communicated by the form of the verb: “walk,” “walked,” “will walk.”

Generally, verb tense should remain consistent in writing. If you start in present tense, stay there, or if you start in past tense, stay there. For example:

I walked to school on Tuesday. When I arrived, I saw my teacher. She told me to get to class quickly. I ran through the door, sat in my chair, and took a deep breath. (Notice that all of the underlined verbs are past tense.)

However, there are times when we want to shift tense to let a reader know things happened at different times. For example:

To Kill a Mockingbird is Harper Lee’s most famous book. It received a Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1961. Lee died in 2016, but her book will remain one of the most compassionate novels in American literature.

Her book is currently famous. She received a prize and died in the past. Her book will remain great into the future.  All those events happened at different times and we change the form of the verb to let the reader know when.

Irregular Verbs

The most troublesome thing about verbs is that many are what is called “irregular.” Regular verbs change to past tense by adding “d” or “ed.” For example:

walk → walked

type → typed

dance → danced

But irregular verbs change in irregular ways. For example:

sell → sold

is → was

think → thought

The best way to learn about irregular verbs is simply to get familiar with them.  Read through the list below, and notice any verbs which have caused you problems in the past: