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The use of weak, passive (weasel) words.

Asked by Juanita Paslay on May 22, 2020

I've been trained not to use weak verbs, but I read that you use them in your Soon books. When is it okay to use weak verbs?

Juanita

Jerry's Answer

Never.

Okay, I'm overstating it, Juanita. Weasle words in one context may be usable in another because it's nearly impossible not to use state-of-being verbs in normal prose.

I wrote Soon the same way I have written my other 197 books, so what's true of it would be true of all of them. [Now, see, if state-of-being verbs were universally verboten, I would have had to find a way around using have and would; but I would venture to say you didn't even notice them.]

But if I write He was standing on the train platform, was stands out as a weasle word, easily fixed by substituting stood for was standing.

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