The list below shows the irregular forms that most often cause errors. If a word marked on your paper is not in the list, look it up in the dictionary.

GRAMMAR TIP: Irregular Verbs

infinitive, past, past participle

awaken, awakened, awakened

bear, bore, borne

beat, beat, beaten

begin, began, begun

blow, blew, blown

break, broke, broken

build, built, built

burst, burst, burst

choose, chose, chosen

cost, cost, cost

dive, dived (or dove), dove

do, did, done

draw, drew, drawn

drink, drank, drunk

drive, drove, driven

eat, ate, eaten

forgive,forgave, forgive

get, got, gotten

give, gave, given

hang (suspend), hung, hung

hang (execute), hanged, hanged

lay, laid, laid

infinitive, past, past participle

lead, led, led

lend, lent, lent

lie, lie, lain

pay, paid, paid

prove, proved, proved (or proven)

ride, rode, ridden

rise, rose, risen

run, ran, ran

see, saw, seen

set, set, set

shake, shook, shaken

shine, shined (or shone), shined, shone

sing, sang, sung

slay, slew, slain

speak, spoke, spoken

steal, stole, stolen

swear, swore, sworn

swim, swam, swum

tear, tore, torn

throw, threw, thrown

wake, woke (or waked), woken (or waked)

write, wrote, written

GRAMMAR TIP: The Principal Parts of Verbs

All verbs have three principal parts:

INFINITIVE: cook

PAST TENSE: cooked

PAST PARTICIPLE: (has) cooked

Many verbs are irregular; they do not merely add “-ed” to form the past tense and past participle:

REGULAR

infinitive, past, past participle

invite, invited, invited

row, rowed, rowed

cry, cried, cried

IRREGULAR

infinitive, past, past participle

write, wrote, written

know, knew, known

fly, flew, flew

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Part: Do not omit the –ed suffix from past participles.

WRONG: a world-renown artist. I use to think so. What am I suppose to do?

RIGHT: a world-renowned artist. I used to think so. What am I supposed to do?

GRAMMAR TIP: Participles

Participles are verb forms that act as adjectives.

PAST PARTICIPLES: We had a heated discussion. I prefer my sandwich warmed.

PRESENT PARTICIPLES: Running water sounds soothing. I hear water running.

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VTR or VI: Do not confuse transitive and intransitive verbs.

Transitive verbs must have direct objects; intransitive verbs must not. (Dictionaries use the abbreviations “vt.” and “vi.” or “trans.” and “intrans.” The Keables Guide uses “VTR” to avoid confusion with the code for verb tense.)

Four errors are common:

1. Do not give direct objects to intransitive verbs:

WRONG: We arrived Japan early.

RIGHT: We arrived at Japan early. (intransitive)

WRONG: He applied Yale.

RIGHT: He applied to Yale. (intransitive)

2. Do not use a preposition for a verb that is transitive:

Unnecessary preposition: They escaped from the cold.

More concise: They escaped the cold.

Unnecessary preposition: I forgot about my curfew.

More concise: I forgot my curfew.

3. Avoid using “that” clauses with transitive verbs. Either replace the clause with a noun phrase as direct object, or restructure the sentence.

AWKWARD: She expressed that she felt sorry.

BETTER (direct object): She expressed sorrow.

BETTER (rephrased): She said that she felt sorry.

AWKWARD: He justified that his car had stalled.

BETTER (direct object): He justified his tardiness by saying his car had stalled.

AWKWARD: She liked that the college offers a Study Abroard program.

BETTER (direct object): She liked the Study Abroad program that the college offers.

The same rule applies when the word “that” is unstated but implied:

WRONG: She expressed she felt sorry. (“that” is implied)

RIGHT: She said she felt sorry.

Some verbs, like “tell,” require an indirect object before “that”:

WRONG: He told that he loved her.

RIGHT: He told her that he loved her.

4. Distinguish indirect objects from direct objects. All transitive verbs require direct objects. Some require indirect objects too.

DIRECT OBJECT ONLY: She spoke the truth.

INDIRECT AND DIRECT OBJECTS: She told me the truth.

Not all transitive verbs can take indirect objects:

WRONG: She spoke me the truth.

Sometimes the indirect object is optional:

Santa brought a puppy.

Santa brought the child a puppy.

The indirect object requires a preposition only if it comes after the direct object:

The child sent sent Santa a letter.

The child sent a letter to Santa.

If the direct object goes before the indirect object, a preposition is necessary—usually “to,” but sometimes another preposition, such as “for” or “of”):

The candidate promised that he would rid the city of crime.

Most errors involve idiomatic use of prepositions:

WRONG: The candidate promised that he would rid crime.

WRONG: The candidate promised that he would rid the city.

WRONG: The candidate promised that he would rid crime from the city.

RIGHT: The candidate promised that he would rid the city of crime.

Another common error is including an unnecessary pronoun:

INFORMAL: I found me a new friend.

FORMAL: I found a new friend.

GRAMMAR TIP: Transitive or Intransitive?

Usually transitive verbs are followed by nouns and intransitive verbs are not. Sometimes, however, the direct object is understood:

VI: I slept.

VTR: I ate dinner.

VTR (understood object): I ate.

Many verbs can be either transitive or intransitive:

VTR: Time heals all wounds. Sun melts ice.

VI: In time, all wounds heal. Ice melts in the sun.

Most intransitive verbs have a transitive sense, even if only one word can be the direct object. Only “life” can be the direct object of “live,” only “death” can be the direct object of “die,” and only “sleep” can be the direct object of “sleep”:

VI: Yuan Zai lives in Taipei.

VTR: Yuan Zai lives an exhausting life.

Yuan Zai at the Taipei Zoo

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Melting Eyes

English poet Alexander Pope (1688-1744) describes a naïve country girl going to the city and learning to flirt “Just when she learned to roll a melting eye.”

Is Pope using the word “melting” transitively or intransitively?

The answer is both: intransitive, because it is an eye that melts, or weeps; transitive, because her lovely glances melt hearts. She is shedding false tears to attract young men. The poet has cleverly used the word in two different senses.

VT: Use the correct verb tense.

Know the tenses. Each tense has a simple, present and progressive form:

Present: I go. I have gone. I am going.

Past: I went. I had gone. I was going.

Future: I go. I will have gone. I will be going.

The most common error is a shift of verb tense. Note the tense shift at “discovers”:

INCONSISTENT: With wide eyes Kitty watched the unsuspecting duck and crept toward it. Pouncing upon her prey, Kitty discovers that the duck is made of rubber.

Your teacher may mark “VT” only once when you have made several tense shifts; study the whole paragraph and change all the incorrect verbs.

Learn to proofread for verb tense. Look for every verb to be sure the tense is consistent.

Perf: Use perfect tenses correctly.

Do not use (a) past tense when you need past perfect, or (b) present tense when you need present perfect.

The most common error is using past when past perfect is needed:

WRONG (PAST): Her parents said she left already.

RIGHT (PAST PERFECT): Her parents said she had left already.

Although it may sound redundant, “had had” is sometimes necessary:

RIGHT: She had had the baby by the time her husband reached the hospital.

The present perfect indicates that an action has been completed. It puts the emphasis on the resulting state.

WRONG (PAST): The plane arrived by now.

RIGHT (PRESENT PERFECT): The plane has arrived by now.

The present perfect may indicate that an action is repeated or that it is continuing in the present. The sentences below are not wrong; they mean different things:

PAST: He attended the school since kindergarten. [He no longer attends it.]

PRESENT PERFECT: He has attended the school since kindergarten. [He still attends it.]

PAST: I saw her often, but we were never introduced.

PRESENT PERFECT: I have seen her often, but we have never been introduced.

GRAMMAR TIP: Perfect Tenses

Unlike the simple past, which indicates action that took place in the past, perfect tenses indicate action that was, is, or will be complete by a specified time.

SIMPLE PAST: ended

PRESENT PERFECT: has ended

PAST PERFECT: had ended

FUTURE PERFECT: will have ended

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PV: Change passive voice to active.

Many writers fall into the habit of relying on passive voice: “The meal is cooked by me.” Learn to proofread for it. A verb is in passive voice if it consists of a linking verb (“am,” “is,” “are,” “was,” “were,” “being”) followed by a past participle (usually ending in “-ed”). In passive voice, the thing acted upon becomes the subject of the verb.

PASSIVE VOICE:

Thing acted on: The meal

Passive verb: is cooked

Preposition: by

Thing that acts: me

ACTIVE VOICE:

Thing that acts: I

Active verb: cook

Thing acted on: the meal

You can easily correct passives like “The meal is cooked by me” by a simple process:

1. Identify the verb: “is cooked.”

2. Ask yourself who or what is performing the action: “Who is doing the cooking?”

3. Make the subject (“the meal”) the object. Often you can just take the phrase before the verb (“The meal”) and move it after the verb.

4. Make the thing that acts (“I”) the subject.

PASSIVE: The dress code was reviewed by a committee of teachers, students and parents.

ACTIVE: A committee of teachers, students and parents reviewed the dress code.

Even when the sentence omits the thing that acts, it is easy to supply:

PASSIVE: He is easily manipulated.

ACTIVE: People easily manipulate him.

Often, however, passive voice has no “by” phrase because it is disguising unclear thinking which fails to identify exactly who is doing what to whom. In such cases, rephrase the sentence, with a clear subject and object:

VAGUE: The ideas are shown using imagery.

CLEAR: Frost uses images to show the ideas.

VAGUE: Without care, errors are made.

CLEAR: Careless writers make errors.

WEAK: It is felt you are wrong.

HONEST: I feel you are wrong.

GRAMMAR TIP: Passive Voice

Passive voice is useful when you want to emphasize the recipient of the action.

USEFUL: The bridge was constructed quickly.

USEFUL: “‘Make’ is pronounced with a silent ‘e.’”

It is not inherently good or bad. Not all languages have it; it is an asset of English. You can hardly speak or write without using it occasionally. Objections to it are not on the grounds of grammar, but only of style, because it is often less concise, energetic and natural than active voice. Suppose Dr. King had used it:

A dream is had by me.

Objections to it followed the rise of prescriptive grammar in the 1700s. For a century grammarians have been arguing in its defense. There are other rules with no grammatical justification, such as those against hanging prepositions (which often result from passive voice) and split infinitives. Good writers use the passive voice to produce powerful effects. In a comic scene from a novel by Charles Dickens, a cruel woman prepares a little boy to visit a wealthy lady. The passive voice makes the boy seem like a helpless victim:

With that, she pounced upon me, like an eagle on a lamb, and my face was squeezed into wooden bowls in sinks, and my head was put under taps of water-butts, and I was soaped, and kneaded, and toweled, and thumped, and harrowed, and rasped, until I really was quite beside myself. . . . When my ablutions were completed, I was put into clean linen of the stiffest character, like a young penitent into sackcloth, and was trussed up in my tightest and fearfullest suit.

Historian Edward Gibbon, famous for his elegant prose style, uses passive voice to argue that the early church used false claims of miracles to manipulate superstitious followers:

The sick were healed, the dead were raised, demons were expelled, and the laws of Nature were frequently suspended for the benefit of the church.

Why, then, does passive voice still have such a bad reputation? It can be a cowardly way of avoiding responsibility:

EVASIVE: It is felt that your opinion might be improved by being reconsidered.

STRAIGHTFORWARD: You are wrong.

The biggest reason is the ugly writing of bureaucrats, politicians, lawyers and businesspersons. Passive voice makes their language sound evasive, impersonal and dehumanized. In his essay “Politics and the English Language” (1946), George Orwell identified passive voice as one of the ways politicians use pompous language to lie to the public.

A government official: Measures have been taken to ensure that elements of the population which have not been democratized are pacified.

What the official means: We jailed and tortured anyone who criticized our government.

Some students pick up the mistaken idea that academic writing should sound stuffy and unnatural. Educators, not always the best role models, are partly to blame. Imitating law schools and business schools, education schools encourage administrators to write in an impersonal style that is heavy on passive voice and jargon.

Admissions officer to parents: At our college, metacognitive thinking skills are nurtured, real-life scenarios are explored, and empathy is fostered in a collaborative, hands-on, synergistic learning environment.

What the officer means: Give us your money.

District Superintendent to Board of Education: Curricula were reviewed, constituents were surveyed, assessments were administered, policies were implemented, and tech upgrades were rolled out.

What the Superintendent means: Please don’t fire me for our record low SAT scores.

Off-Key: What Passive Voice Can Do to Good Writing

O let it be said can what so proudly was hailed by us

At the twilight’s last gleaming be seen by the dawn’s early light by you,

Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight

Were so gallantly streaming o’er the ramparts that were watched by us?

And by the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air,

Through the night proof that our flag was still there was given.

O let whether that banner that with stars is spangled does yet wave

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave be said.

To hear “Off-Key,” go to the audio link at the bottom of the page. Performance by John Alexander.

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VS: Use the subjunctive mood for wishes and conditions contrary to fact.

WRONG: If I was rich, I wouldn’t be here.

RIGHT: If I were rich, I wouldn’t be here.

WRONG: I wish she was here.

RIGHT: I wish she were here.

WRONG: I recommend that he leaves.

RIGHT: I recommend that he leave.

WRONG: I move that the meeting is adjourned.

RIGHT: I move that the meeting be adjourned.

GRAMMAR TIP: Moods of Verbs

Verbs have four moods:

INDICATIVE (statement of fact): I shut the door.

IMPERATIVE (command): Shut the door.

INTERROGATIVE (question): Did you shut the door?

SUBJUNCTIVE (contrary to fact): I wish I had shut the door.

Grammarians distinguish subjunctive mood from conditional. For the sake of simplicity, most teachers speak of them as one. People seldom use the subjunctive nowadays except in three situations:

“If” clauses expressing situations contrary to fact (“If I were you”).

“That” clauses following verbs like “wish,” “recommend” and “urge” (“I wish I were rich”).

A few familiar expressions like “be that as it may” and “to whom it may concern.”

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