Common Sense Journalism

Some Thoughts on Verbs

By Doug Fisher

Let's start this month with a short quiz:

1) A verb's tense reflects the time orientation of the story's ____?
2) The "perfect" in a tense like past perfect means the action has been ___?
3) The ____ tense too often is not used when it should be.
4) In a lede without a time element, the ____ or ____ tenses are preferred.
5) Verbs also have "mood." Which mood suggests fantasy, wishful thinking or a condition contrary to fact?

Verbs are the engines that power our stories. Weak verbs make weak writing; the perfect verb makes copy sing.

Verbs also carry powerful nuances that require care. As discussed here before, "claims" inevitably implies questions about credibility. Using "states" is, as Jack Cappon of the AP once wrote, "the instant mark of a wooden writer," and verbs like "noted" and "pointed out" impart a certain credibility.

But to avoid bollixing up things, we also should remember that a verb's tense reflects the time orientation of the writer/narrator or speaker. Do you see a problem in this recent lede about a memorial for seven students killed in a fire at Ocean Isle Beach?

Genie Lee looks across the only street leading into this North Carolina town of about 500 people to see an aluminum cross and a stone bearing her son's name.

About two miles from where she is standing sits a silent sand lot – the only sound the rustling of plastic wrap that holds dead $4 roses.

It was there six months ago that her son, William Rhea, and six of his friends did in a fire that to her is still burning.

Lee came to Ocean Isle Beach just for the day – to watch as the town memorializes her son with a cross and some flowers in a private ceremony.

Eventually, she will cross the Odell Williamson Bridge ...

"Came" is out of place. The writer, with the present tense, had signaled he was there with Lee, watching and hearing. But with "came," suddenly the writer was looking back at the scene from afar, as we do with most journalistic writing. Then, with the future tense "will," he was back to being there and looking forward.

We psychologically are hard-wired to pick up on the orientation that verb tenses signal, and such unnatural shifts clang on the brain.

Enter the "perfect" tenses. To perfect (emphasis on the last syllable) is to complete something; the perfect tenses signify completed action. Since the writer used present as the main tense, he should have taken one step back along the sequence of tenses to present perfect (Lee has come), since her coming to the town was complete before the current narration.

Writers often use the simple past tense instead of past perfect, and editors miss it often enough that fellow copy-editing teacher Jane Harrigan calls it one of "The Five Grammar Points You Meet in Hell."

A simple example: The house was destroyed when firefighters arrived. (Did their arrival cause the destruction?) The house had been destroyed when firefighters arrived. (The destruction was complete before they got there.)

Another of the perfect tenses – present perfect – works in a lede without a time element. Again, we tend to be hard wired so that the first time we hear or read past tense, we wonder "when." Using the present perfect or present tense eases that:

-- A grand jury has indicted Mayor Joe Smith on two bribery counts.

-- (Next day) Mayor Joe Smith says he is innocent of any wrongdoing ...

Some papers still use the unadorned "said" without a time element. Not only is it jarring, but in this digital age there also may be good reason to move the time element out of our ledes and use the perfect or present tense – the past tense says, "This is old news." It may be time to drop the shibboleth that "said" and a time element must be in the lede of hard-news stories.

Finally, it's worth remembering that verbs also have mood, especially subjunctive, which too often is underused. It's for cases of fantasy or wishful thinking or conditions contrary to fact. ("I wish my roommate were not such a slob" may well hit the trifecta on those.)

Subjunctive also signals what the speaker actually knows. For instance, if you asked me whether the boss was in, and I replied, "If she was here, she'd be in her office," it means I'm not sure whether she actually is in. However, if I said, "If she were here, she'd be in her office," I'm telling you I know she is not (condition contrary to fact).

Doug Fisher, a former AP news editor, teaches journalism at the University of South Carolina and can be reached at dfisher@sc.edu or 803-777-3315.