Replacing “to be” verbs means finding every instance of am, is, are, was, were, be, being, and been in your writing, then restructuring the sentence so a stronger, more specific verb carries the meaning. The goal isn’t to eliminate every single one (some are grammatically necessary), but to cut the weak ones that make your prose feel flat or wordy. Here’s how to do it, technique by technique.
Spot the Eight Forms First
Before you can replace anything, you need to recognize what you’re looking for. The complete list of “to be” forms is: am, is, are, was, were, be, being, and been. Use your word processor’s Find function to search for each one. Highlight every hit, then evaluate each sentence individually. Some will need rewriting; others are fine as they are. This scanning step turns an abstract editing goal into a concrete checklist.
Turn the Descriptor Into the Verb
The most common “to be” pattern links a subject to a description: “The report is confusing.” The fix is to look at the descriptor (confusing) and ask whether it can become the main verb instead. “The report confuses readers” is tighter and tells you who’s affected. A few more examples:
- “She is a great leader” becomes “She leads exceptionally.”
- “The cat is asleep” becomes “The cat sleeps.”
- “Jane is a shining example of hard work” becomes “Jane shines as an example of hard work.”
The trick is to look at the word sitting after the “to be” verb and ask: is there a real action hiding inside that word? Most of the time there is.
Unbury Hidden Verbs
A hidden verb, sometimes called a nominalization, is an action word that’s been turned into a noun. When that happens, a “to be” verb (or another weak verb like “make” or “conduct”) gets dragged in to prop up the sentence. Swap the noun back into verb form, and the “to be” verb disappears on its own.
- “We will conduct a demonstration of the process” becomes “We will demonstrate the process.”
- “Please make an application for a personal loan” becomes “Please apply for a personal loan.”
- “The team was in agreement about the deadline” becomes “The team agreed on the deadline.”
Watch for nouns ending in -tion, -ment, -ance, and -ence. They often started life as verbs. “Investigation” hides “investigate.” “Management” hides “manage.” “Resistance” hides “resist.” Flip them back, and your sentences get shorter and more direct in one move.
Flip Passive Voice to Active
Passive voice is one of the biggest generators of “to be” verbs in any draft. In a passive sentence, the thing receiving the action sits in the subject position, and a form of “be” plus a past participle does the heavy lifting: “The report was written by the marketing team.” To fix it, find the real actor (often hiding in a “by the…” phrase), promote them to the subject, and let them own the verb: “The marketing team wrote the report.”
Sometimes the actor isn’t stated at all. “Mistakes were made” doesn’t tell you who made them. In those cases, you need to look at the surrounding context and decide who actually performed the action, then name them: “The project manager made mistakes” or “We made mistakes.” If you genuinely don’t know or can’t say who the actor is, passive voice may be the right call. But most of the time, you can find the actor and give your sentence a real subject.
Eliminate “There Is” and “It Is” Openers
“There is,” “there are,” and “it is” are placeholder subjects. They let a sentence exist without saying anything meaningful until several words in. Cutting them forces you to lead with real content.
- “There are five candidates competing for the role” becomes “Five candidates compete for the role.”
- “It is important to note that the defendant apologized” becomes “Significantly, the defendant apologized” or simply “The defendant apologized.”
- “There is a fee associated with late payments” becomes “Late payments carry a fee.”
These constructions slow readers down because they have to wade through words that carry no meaning before reaching the actual point. If you’re working under a word limit, eliminating placeholder subjects is one of the fastest ways to tighten your writing without losing any information.
Combine Two Weak Sentences Into One Strong One
Sometimes a “to be” verb appears because you’ve split one idea across two sentences, and the second sentence needs a linking verb to connect back to the first. Merging them can eliminate the problem entirely.
“The software update was released on Tuesday. It was designed to fix the login bug” becomes “The software update released Tuesday fixes the login bug.” You went from two “to be” verbs and two sentences down to zero “to be” verbs and one sentence. Look for back-to-back sentences that share a subject. They’re often candidates for this kind of merge.
When “To Be” Verbs Are the Right Choice
Not every “to be” verb needs replacing. Some sentences genuinely require one, and forcing an alternative makes the writing sound awkward or unnatural. Keep “to be” verbs when you’re stating:
- Identity or group membership: “She is a firefighter.” “He is my cousin.” There’s no action happening here, just a fact about who someone is.
- Age: “I was seventeen when I moved.” Replacing this with something like “I had seventeen years” sounds stilted in English.
- Location: “The store is on Main Street.” You could say “The store sits on Main Street,” but “is” works perfectly fine and sounds natural.
- Time and dates: “The meeting is at noon.” No stronger verb improves this.
- Continuous actions: “She is reading” needs the auxiliary “is” to show an action in progress. That’s a grammatical structure, not a weak verb choice.
- Temporary behavior: “You’re being generous” uses the continuous form of “be” to describe how someone acts in the moment. No substitute carries the same meaning.
The goal of replacing “to be” verbs is stronger, more vivid writing. If a replacement makes the sentence clunky, vague, or harder to understand, the original “to be” verb was doing its job. Keep it and move on to the next one.
A Practical Editing Workflow
Trying to avoid “to be” verbs while drafting can slow you to a crawl. A better approach is to write your first draft without worrying about verb strength at all, then run a dedicated editing pass afterward.
Start by using Find to search for each of the eight forms. Work through them one at a time. For each highlighted instance, ask three questions: Is there a real action hiding in a nearby noun? Is there an actor who should be the subject? Is this a placeholder opening like “there is” that I can cut? If the answer to all three is no, and the sentence states identity, age, location, time, or an ongoing action, leave it alone.
You won’t eliminate every “to be” verb, and you shouldn’t try. Professional writers commonly aim to cut 50 to 75 percent of them in a given draft. That range is enough to make prose noticeably more direct and energetic without twisting sentences into unnatural shapes.