Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Yet another group of needless words and the search for the actual verb.

I recently read something and felt my skin crawl at the same time. Something was amiss. Sigh, go back, read it again.

We are requesting that you give blah blah blah.

Okay, what’s wrong? This is another version of the search for the actual verb. In the line above “requesting” appears to be the verb, but that means that “We” is using a passive voice, adding needless words, and causing my skin to crawl.

Let’s try this:

Would you please give blah blah blah

I know who is talking, the person who sent me the message. Now I can see the actual verb: “give.” I tossed in the “please” just to be polite. Note, it wasn’t in the first skin-crawl-inducing line. Also note that this version is shorter. I could provide the text that came in place of the blah blah blah, but they also had extra words that were hiding the actual verb and the first part had enough skin crawling for one blog post.

Edit onwards.