10 Finding Verbs
So many grammar books and lessons focus on finding subjects first, and then verbs. And that’s totally fine. If you’re crafting a sentence, you’ll need both anyway.
But I like to focus on the verb first, for a few reasons. First, more people are familiar with the concept, so they find it easier to locate the verb(s) in a sentence. Second, verbs are – in my opinion – the most important part of a sentence. They are, in the words of one of my professors in grad school, the “life’s blood” of a sentence. If the verb in a sentence is missing or weak, the sentence is doomed. So, let’s get in the habit of being aware of verbs. It will make your writing better, I promise.
Finding the Verb(s)
Sometimes finding the verb is easy. Just ask yourself what word expresses the action happening in the sentence. For example:
The frog leaps into the air.
The action happening in the sentence is expressed with the word leaps. So, leaps is the verb.
Leap is an example of an action verb, and action verbs tend to be easier to spot. Sometimes I find it helpful to picture the sentence in my mind like a movie and ask myself “What’s happening in this movie?” The answer to that question will lead me to the verb.
PRACTICE: Spot the Action Verb
If you found that practice set challenging, you’ll need some more practice before you can move on. Entering the phrase “Finding action verbs practice” into a search engine will provide many options for additional practice. I’ll provide a few links to some additional practice below as well.
Once you’re comfortable locating action verbs, congratulations! Now you’re ready to engage with other types.
For our purposes in this text, there will be three types:
- Action verbs (which we’ve already seen)
- Linking verbs
- Helping verbs
Linking Verbs
These verbs don’t express actions. Instead, their job is to connect, or link, the subject of the sentence to the words that are describing it, as in the sentence below.
The road is long and narrow.
This sentence is about a road (that’s the subject), and a few words toward the end of the sentence describe the road – long and narrow. The linking verb is creates a link or bridge connecting the two parts together.
The most common linking verb is some version of “to be” (is, are, was, were). Other common linking verbs appear in the table below:
Examples of Linking Verbs
| Forms of to be |
Forms of to become |
Sensory Verbs |
| is / are /am | become | feel |
| was / were | became | smell |
| can be | will become | sound |
| could/would be | has / have become | appear |
| will be | look | |
| would be | taste | |
| has/have/had been |
Helping Verbs
The fancy name for these is auxiliary verbs, but we’ll call them helping verbs because that’s their job. They help writers indicate when an action happens. In other words, we use these helping verbs to express an action in the past tense, or future tense, or any of the other special tenses.
Let’s demonstrate how helping verbs work using a simple sentence:
Hermes reads many history books.
In this first sentence, the action is in the present tense. But what if we want to say that Hermes has done this in the past?
Hermes has read many history books.
I’ve added the helping verb has (and took the ‘s’ off of the action verb), and now the action is in the past tense; Hermes read the books some time in the past.
Changing the helping verbs changes when the action in the sentence happens:
Hermes will read many history books. (action will happen later, in the future)
Hermes is reading many history books. (action is happening right now)
Modal Verbs
There’s another type of helping verb called a modal, which you will see a lot. Modals don’t help us change the tense of a verb. Instead they help us express the likelihood of an action happening (I might play hockey tomorrow), or make a suggestion (You should play hockey tomorrow), or the ability of someone to complete an action (I can play hockey tomorrow).
We’re not going to spend too much time on this here; this discussion of verbs is complicated enough already.
Impostor Verbs: “ING” Verbs and Infinitives
Take a moment to read the two sentences below and identify the verb(s) in each one. Write them down on a scrap of paper.
Cooking for my family makes me happy.
To succeed in life is everyone’s wish.
Did you write them down? If not, go back and do so. Make that extra effort to keep yourself engaged.
Now, examine your list. In the first sentence, did you include the word cooking? And in the second sentence, did you write down succeed? If so, you’ve fallen for my sneaky trap. Because cooking and succeed aren’t verbs at all! They’re impostors, and there are two types you need to look out for.
“ING Verbs”
These look like verbs, but they actually work like nouns — they are subjects and objects in a sentence. Let’s examine some sentences to illustrate the concept.
Skating is very difficult without proper footwear.
In the first sentence, if I was looking for verbs I might point to skating, but examine the sentence carefully. Is anyone actually skating in the sentence? No! The sentence is instead giving us information about the idea of skating; it’s something that can be difficult. So skating isn’t acting as the verb in this sentence; it’s actually the focus of the sentence — it’s the subject. And if I look elsewhere for a verb, I see that most common of all linking verbs: is.
Now let’s examine another sentence.
Tammy is skating with her family.
In this sentence, I see a helping verb (was) in front of skating. And if I think about the sentence, I realize that there is an action happening in this sentence. Tammy is skating. So when the “ing” verb has a helping verb in front of it, it functions as a verb. If it doesn’t, it functions as a noun.
Infinitives
Infinitives take the form “to + VERB” (to love, to learn, to donate, to build, etc.). Infinitives don’t function as verbs in a sentence; instead, they express concepts, so they function as nouns (ie., as subjects and objects).
Let’s return to the sentence from the beginning of this discussion.
To succeed in life is everyone’s wish.
No one is actually doing an action in this sentence; no one is succeeding. Instead, this sentence gives us information about the concept of succeeding, telling us that this concept is a goal everyone shares. So succeed is not the verb, and if I look around for the verb, once again I’ll find that common linking verb: is.
So, when you’re looking for verbs in a sentence, watch out for these two impostors!
Finding the Complete Verb
When looking for the verb in a sentence, make sure you identify the complete verb, which includes action verbs as well as any helping verbs. Let’s revisit an earlier sentence in the chapter to illustrate this point:
Hermes will read many history books.
In this sentence, I see an action verb (read), and if I look to the left of the action verb, I also see a helping verb (will). So, in this sentence, the complete verb is will + read –> will read.
PRACTICE: Find the Complete Verb