Using Active Verbs to Strengthen Academic Prose

Good academic writing does not have to be dull. Yet many students, in the understandable rush to sound scholarly, end up with prose that plods: sentences weighed down by abstract nouns, limp verbs and passive constructions that hide who is doing what. The irony is that the very habits intended to make writing sound more academic often make it weaker. One of the quickest ways to sharpen an essay is to pay attention to verbs. Strong, active verbs give your argument momentum, clarity and authority — and they do it without any loss of formality.

Why verbs matter more than you think

Verbs are the engine of a sentence. They carry the action, the relationship and often the argument itself. When the verb is weak, everything around it has to work harder: nouns multiply, prepositions pile up, and the reader has to excavate the meaning from a sentence that should have delivered it directly.

Consider the difference between these two sentences:

• Weak: "There is a consideration of the role of gender in the novel's depiction of power."
• Stronger: "The novel frames power through the lens of gender."

The second version is shorter, more confident and no less formal. It also commits to an interpretation — which is precisely what an essay is for. Weak constructions allow writers to hover above their subject; active verbs force them to land on it.

Spotting the culprits: nominalisations and empty verbs

The most common source of flabby academic prose is the nominalisation — a verb that has been turned into a noun, usually with an extra verb bolted on to keep the sentence grammatical. The action ends up buried in the noun, while the verb itself does almost nothing.

Look at these familiar patterns:

• "The author makes an examination of the evidence" → "The author examines the evidence"
• "The study conducts an analysis of the data" → "The study analyses the data"
• "The committee came to a decision" → "The committee decided"
• "The argument places emphasis on intent" → "The argument emphasises intent"

Verbs such as make, conduct, carry out, provide and perform are often little more than scaffolding around a noun that should have been a verb all along. Removing them tightens the sentence and, more importantly, clarifies who is doing what.

Rehabilitating the passive — selectively

It is worth saying plainly: the passive voice is not a crime. Academic writing needs it sometimes. When the agent is unknown, irrelevant or genuinely less important than the action, the passive is the right choice. "The manuscript was copied in the fifteenth century" is perfectly good prose; inventing an agent would be worse.

The problem is not the passive itself but its default use — reaching for it out of habit, particularly when it allows the writer to avoid taking a position. Compare:

• Habitual passive: "It has been suggested by critics that the ending is ambiguous."
• Active alternative: "Critics disagree about the ending's ambiguity."

A useful test: if you can name the agent, and naming them strengthens your argument, use the active. Save the passive for when it genuinely serves the sentence.

Choosing verbs with precision

Once you start using active verbs, the next step is choosing the right ones. Vague verbs such as shows, states, discusses and talks about appear so often in student essays that they lose all force. Each of them can be replaced with something more exact:

• Instead of shows: demonstrates, reveals, illustrates, establishes
• Instead of states: argues, contends, asserts, concedes
• Instead of discusses: examines, interrogates, traces, unpacks
• Instead of talks about: addresses, explores, interprets

Note that these are not simply fancier synonyms. Each carries a slightly different claim. To say a critic concedes a point is not the same as saying they assert it; to say a text interrogates an idea is not the same as saying it illustrates one. Precision of verb is precision of thought — and examiners notice.

Keeping the tone formal while gaining energy

Some writers worry that active verbs will make their prose sound breezy or journalistic. In practice, the opposite is usually true. A sentence such as "The poem refuses easy consolation" is more, not less, authoritative than "There is a refusal of easy consolation within the poem." Vividness and formality are not opposites; vagueness and formality are far more often confused.

A few practical habits will keep you on track:

• Read your sentences aloud. If you run out of breath before the verb arrives, the sentence needs work.
• Underline every verb in a paragraph. Are any of them doing real work?
• Hunt for "there is" and "there are" at the start of sentences. They almost always signal a buried verb.
• Watch your adverb count. A strong verb rarely needs "very" or "clearly" propping it up.
• Revise verbs last. Get the argument down, then go back and upgrade the engine.

None of this means writing should become a hunt for ostentatious vocabulary. The goal is fit — a verb that matches the action, the register and the claim. A well-chosen active verb does three jobs at once: it shortens the sentence, sharpens the meaning and signals that the writer knows exactly what they are saying. In an essay, that confidence is half the argument. The other half, of course, is having something worth saying — but strong verbs are what make a reader believe you do.