This handout is available for download in PDF format. Active verbs are important components of any academic writing! Just as in other forms of writing, they work as engines, driving the action of your ...

Effective writing is readable — that is ... choose carefully between active and passive voice, and avoid dangling verb forms. Verbs are for describing actions, states, or occurrences.

Here traditionalists have managed to keep “pleaded” as the most common form in writing, but “pled” is in circulation as well. Rarely, a verb will have two past forms with different meanings.