🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <16047@mindlink.bc.ca>, Alan_Barclay@mindlink.bc.ca (Alan Barclay) writes:
|"There was a cat on the table"
|
|vs.
|
|"The cat sprawled on the table."
|
|Notice that the first sentence is passive and the second, active.  "Was" is
|an element in many passive constructions.  For that reason alone, hunting and
|rewriting is a good idea.  (P.S. could I write this paragraph without using
|"is?" :) )

Just to pick a nit or two, the first sentence may suffer from vagueness
and the lack of a decent subject, but it does not use the passive 
voice.  Let's not confuse "passive" in the grammatical sense with mere
flabbiness of the prose.  The sentence would be less flabby if it read

"The cat was on the table."

Verb-to-be sentences often have the problem that they lack information.
The reader may conclude from your construction or mine that the cat lies
there like a sack of potatoes or crouches there poised to spring.
Context may well supply the correct interpretation, and a blanket
injunction against sentences like this one leads eventually to the
grade-school writing exercise style where every noun has a couple of
adjectives and every verb gets an adverb, willy-nilly.

"The big grey cat lay quietly on the wide wooden table.  The sad little
boy quietly opened the big wooden door to the long dark dining room." et
cetera.

My conclusion?  A writer needs to have a better ear for paragraphs that
work than his readers have.  That way he stays one step ahead of their
expectations, and holds their interest.  No set of rules about
constructions to avoid or to favor can hope to replace a good ear.

Where would Orwell have found himself without the verb to be?

"It was a cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen. . . ."

========================================================================
[BTW, notice any forms of to-be (outside quotes) in this?]

-- 
--Fred, or another blind 8th-century BC  |  sasafw@dobo.unx.sas.com
        Hellenic poet of the same name.  |