CHAPTER 5

The Use of Verbs

The key to meaningful utterance is the verb. The verb transforms the
indeterm inate utterance the plum ber into the meaningful utterance
Call the plum ber. You can utter nouns or pronouns by the dozen
w ithout making sense. Potatoes, peas, cabbage, carrots. The nouns make
meaningful utterance only if a verb is added or is understood. Please
supply me w ith . . . In earlier chapters we w ere concerned w ith the
choice o f words. Our subject was primarily the m eaning o f individual
words. Here, however, we are m ore concerned w ith the way in w hich
w ords can properly be arranged. And since the verb is a key element in
the structure of utterance, good w riting is impossible w ithout correct
use o f verbs. W here we go w rong in the use o f verbs is something
we cannot afford to ignore. If we examine current error carefully, we
shall find that a few false uses of the verb corrupt current usage widely.
It is our task to examine these bad habits and show how they can be
avoided.

USE OF S I N G U L A R A N D P L U R A L
We say The bird sings sweetly and The birds sing sweetly and we do
not think o f the choice between the singular sings and the plural sing
as a grammatical danger zone. Yet we may feel less confident in choosing
between The choir is singing tw o madrigals and The choir are singing
tw o madrigals.