How You Can Prevent the Wrong Verb Usage in a Sentence

Why Might You Need Help When Using Verb in a Sentence?

Being assigned an academic paper is a difficult task in itself to get completed without the added pressure that your grammar needs to be spot on, but perfect it must be which is why using a verb checker online is important. When using verb in a sentence, for example, you need to ensure that the right one has been selected and that the suitable tense has been adapted to best describe each thought or point. Erratic verb tenses can be particularly annoying to the reader and they may determine that you failed in checking your paper. Verbs are the backbone of every sentence written, they provide the necessary description of what action is taking place or the state of something in the past, present, and future tense.

There are many rules which govern the correct usage of verb forms, whether you use regular or irregular will also be determined by the type of verb; action, linking or helping. These are also split into further categories such as transitive or intransitive and then, of course, there are phrasal verbs. Phrasal verbs examples would be ‘break up’ or ‘hold on’ and it is where a verb is combined with a preposition or adverb to give a completely different meaning. The list of rules which governs correct verb usage goes on and on and can be extremely difficult to understand in their entirety. That’s why many people use a professional service such as ours to get the best level of grammar help and be shown how to use a verb in a sentence correctly from fully qualified experts.

What Happens When Using Verb in a Sentence Incorrectly?

Sentences using verb should describe the tense in which an action or event was/has/is carried out (past, present or future) and this is often where many students get confused. With regular verbs this can be achieved quite simply by adding ‘ed’ to the end of a word; Sarah ‘changes’ her mind to Sarah ‘changed’ her mind to move from present to past tense. Irregular verbs are a little more difficult and one of the most common error people make when writing a sentence is to mix up the tenses. The following examples show just how confusing using the wrong tense for a verb in a sentence can be:

  1. Sarah GOES to the store and she BOUGHT some candy;
  2. I WILL eat spaghetti for my dinner tonight and DRANK milk with it;
  3. My mother TOLD me that honesty WAS the best policy;
  4. Tim WATCHED the movie on TV and LAUGHS out loud to himself;
  5. Mary EATS chocolate whenever she GOT upset.

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Most Common Misuse of a Verb in a Sentence

One of the main goals when writing an essay is trying to make your English sound natural and be comprehensible to anyone who reads it. Therefore using long or complicated words and failing to carry out a thorough proofread to catch wrong verb usage (lie/lay) may result in a piece of work that is extremely difficult to read. Even in everyday life, there are many people who get their verbs mixed up when speaking to a friend. Because the context is understood however and partly because they don’t carry the Oxford advanced learner’s dictionary in their back pocket, these mistakes are rarely noticed. When you hand In a piece of academic writing though, these mistakes will stand out a mile to your teacher so you need to pay extra attention to correcting them. The most common mix-ups are:

  • Affect/effect
  • Altogether/all together
  • Appraise/apprise
  • Deduce/deduct
  • Doesn’t/don’t
  • Due to/because
  • Farther/further
  • Imply/infer
  • Irregardless/regardless
  • Lie/lay
  • Lose/loose
  • May/can
  • Me /myself
  • Precede /proceed
  • Saw/seen
  • Was/were
  • Went/gone

What the Experts Have to Say on How to Write a Perfect Sentence

Faculty at The University of Louisville writing center says:

“Punctuation and grammar are tools writers use to communicate their ideas clearly to readers. Using grammar and punctuation effectively allows your reader to focus on these complex ideas instead of puzzling over the meaning of each sentence or paragraph. You’ve put a lot of thought and effort into what you want to write, and grammar and punctuation allow you to express those ideas in a standardized communication that readers will recognize and understand.”

In order to improve your language skills and learn how to write a perfect sentence, they also suggest that you:

  1. Read as often as possible and take note of how others make use of grammar conventions;
  2. Use an active voice rather than a passive one;
  3. Always have a modern Standard English language dictionary on hand;
  4. Learn how to proofread effectively in order to find mistakes;
  5. Test yourself regularly on the placement of verbs and read the sentence out loud to see if it makes sense;
  6. Make use of online libraries such as The OWL at Perdue.
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Our Perfect Sentence Checker Can Quickly Search for Any Errors

Using verb in a sentence can be a complicated procedure which is hampered by choosing the right form and tense of whatever you are writing about. In choosing the wrong verb, you are more likely to cause anyone reading your paper to restart a sentence in order to try and make sense with too many mistakes leading them to just put it aside. By using our perfect verb checker online, you are able to check if you have used the correct verbs and that they are in the right tense. Our tool will quickly show you where any problems exist and suggest alternatives that are more appropriate to the action being described. Powered by a full database of all the different kind of verbs and whether they are regular or irregular, our perfect sentence checker is always available to assist with your writing.

Get in touch with our friendly customer support team to get the best help for using verb in a sentence today!