Catch Your Reader's Ear: Verb Choice and Scholarly Voice

If you want to level-up your scholarly voice, there’s one part of speech I recommend focusing on: verbs, the words that convey the action in each sentence. Today, let’s consider three different kinds of verbs that can make a big difference towards improving your scholarly writing.

Avoid Verbs that Express Feelings
When you’re passionate about your topic, it’s tempting to bring your personal opinions into a paper. However, it’s best to avoid phrases such as “I believe,” “I think,” and “I feel” in academic writing. Because you’re the one writing the paper, your reader will safely assume that you believe, think, or feel what you’ve written. Furthermore, academic writing privileges research-based evidence over personal opinion. 

Instead of writing an opinion, like this one:

I think that students need to pay more attention to what they read.

Support your beliefs with evidence from your research:

Adler (1940) argued that most Americans did not understand what they read, so the author outlined a series of three reading strategies to aid comprehension.

Your own opinions can be a great place to start, especially when choosing a topic, but it’s important to ground your academic writing in research and remain objective as a scholar.

Vary Verbs that Introduce
It’s often a good idea to introduce evidence with a brief contextualizing phrase. However, it can be tiresome to write “according to so-and-so” over and over again. To add some variety into your use of evidence, incorporate different kinds of verbs into these introductory phrases.

The way you compose your introductory phrases can also show your reader your own perspective on the evidence. If you agree with the source material, you might say the author concluded or proved, whereas if you disagree with it, you might say the author chose or justified. If you don’t have any feelings about it either way, you might say the author proposed or examined.

See this verb “cheat sheet” for a great list of verbs that you can use in your own writing.

Replace “to be” Verbs
To really make your writing more dynamic, try omitting all versions of the verb “to be.” These include be, am, is, are, was, were, been, and being. Instead, substitute verbs that better convey action. For example, take a look at this passage in which a student describes themself:

When I was a college student, I studied nursing and earned my BSN. After graduation, I was a nurse in an emergency department for 6 years. I am now a lead nurse in the emergency department of my hospital. I am interested in earning my MSN so that I am able to continue to advance my career and contribute to social change.

Let’s find all of the “to be” verb conjugations. I have highlighted them below:

When I was a college student, I studied nursing and earned my BSN. After graduation, I was a nurse in an emergency department for 6 years. I am now a lead nurse in the emergency department of my hospital. I am interested in earning my MSN so that I am able to continue to advance my career and contribute to social change.

Now, look at this revision, which avoids the “to be” verb:

I earned a BSN from Walden University. After graduation, I served as an emergency department nurse for 6 years. Now, I work as a lead nurse in the emergency department of my hospital. Earning my MSN will allow me to continue to advance my career and contribute to social change.

I hope you’ll agree that the revised version is not only more concise, but also more interesting to read.

The next time you revise a piece of writing, I hope you’ll look at the verbs in your paper in a new light—they really can be key for making your writing sound more interesting and scholarly.

Cheryl Read is a Writing Instructor in the Walden University Writing Center. Verbs that typically describe Cheryl include writing, parenting, hiking, and knitting. 

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