If you want to say something with fewer words in English, it’s often possible to choose more specific vocabulary. When it comes to choosing your verbs, this can impact entire phrases.
Today, I’m looking at a common issue in my fiction editing work, where we have verbs that may be accompanied by information like adverbs, prepositional phrases and even object phrases that do not add any additional detail. These can be easily trimmed if you’re working to a word count, or just want to be more efficient in your language use!
How Verbs Attract Extra Words
This can seem like a picky point, but we often see or hear verbs accompanied by information that essentially repeats something already conveyed by the action. For example, ‘shout loudly’ does not tell more than ‘shout’, as a shout is, by definition, loud. We often add such words quite instinctively, I suspect because we intend to express a specific detail without stopping to think about how we’ve already successfully expressed it. Though tricky to tackle when speaking, we can certainly look out for this when editing our writing!
The rich range of vocabulary in English gives us all sorts of nuanced choices for words – but this isn’t necessarily an advanced topic. Sometimes it is just a case of better understanding or paying attention to what verbs really mean. Through this consideration, we can shorten many verb phrases.
I’ve broken this down into three groups of example verbs that we can look out for to trim extra words: verbs which tell us the manner of what is done, verbs which tell us the direction of what is done and verbs which can tell us what is being used (i.e. implied objects). In all these cases, the extra details shown below aren’t incorrect as such, but can draw unwanted attention the verb and phrasing, which might distract your reader or listener by making them question if the additional detail is important. So, unless you want to be specifically emphatic, trimming these unnecessary words can help keep your language clean and clear.
Verbs Describing Manner
When choosing your verbs (as with all vocab!), there are typically simpler/general options and more specific, descriptive options. When you modify a general verb with an adverb, it’s often possible to instead use a different verb.
For example:
- run fast -> sprint
- talk quietly -> whisper
- liked a lot -> adored
While general verbs and adverbs have their own uses, what’s useful to recognise here is that more specific verbs are less likely to need such descriptors. If you already have a verb that describes a certain manner of action, extra description is not necessary.
For example:
- sprint [quickly]
- whisper [quietly]
- adored [a lot]
By definition, a sprint is fast, a whisper is quiet, and adoration is already extreme, so we don’t need these describing words. You can add such descriptors for emphasis, but it’s best to be aware of when and why you are doing this.
Verbs Describing Directions
Similarly, certain action verbs can by their nature express a directional aspect, making prepositions and prepositional phrases unnecessary. Such verbs might look like phrasal verbs, and fall into common usage, but they’re often just collocations. To look out for verbs that express directions, consider if the action would be unclear without a preposition.
For example:
- rise up
- crouch down
- climb up
- shout out
- dive under
This is not quite as simple as the describing verbs above, as the necessity for prepositions depends on how we’re connecting to a sentence, but without context, of all the verbs above except dive would give us the same information without the preposition. Rise must always go up and crouch down, and a shout always goes out (baring the artistic inward shout of thinking!). Without a specific context, climb generally means up, though we can also climb down. Dive, however, does not suggest a specific direction on its own – while it typically implies down, a dive can also go forward, sideways or up, or in this example under something.
Without objects and obstacles, verbs suggesting a direction can easily be simplified without prepositions. Unless you want to describe such actions in relation to something, e.g. to crouch under a table, we can mostly understand the directions of many verbs on their own.
Note, these extra prepositions don’t just apply to physical directions – more abstract verbs also can work on their own without prepositions, such as ‘add in/on’ = ‘add’.
Verbs Implying An Object
Lastly, there are verbs which by their nature tell us what is used to complete an action. People often add an object or indirect object to such verbs where it is unnecessary. This can be a trickier point to look out, but mostly I find these relate to actions that use body parts, perhaps because the verbs don’t obviously describing a body part, but typically don’t need the extra detail. For example:
- nod his head
- blink her eyes
- kick with his foot
- wave her hand
- shrug his shoulders
Unless there is something surprising or important about the object being used with such verbs, again it can sound strange or long-winded to add them. Again while this may sound picky, consider if you were to say ‘He hammered with a hammer.’ or ‘She spoke with her mouth.’ – someone who’s really paying attention could be distracted by such phrasing. Such verbs only need objects when the action is being specifically directed towards something other than the general meaning.
- She waved a flag.
- He kicked with the toe of his foot.
- She shrugged one shoulder.
Otherwise, I’d suggest keeping those verbs clean!
As I always say, this all depends on context and there are no absolutes in language, but I hope this gives some starting points for thinking about we can be more efficient in our phrasing of verbs, cutting out unnecessary words for a crisper, clearer meaning. And if you can think of other similar examples, feel free to share them in the comments below!
