Every writer knows that, without verbs, their sentences are meaningless. They are the single most important part of any sentence and the hardest part is choosing the right type of verb to get your meaning across. How do you do that? By learning what the different verb types are.

A verb is an action word, telling us what’s going on in a sentence. On occasion, they will also tell us the state of a being and there are three verb types:

Action – transitive/intransitive verbs

Modal – helping verbs

Auxiliary – linking verbs

Action Verbs

Action verbs keep your writing moving. Whenever something or someone is doing something in your writing, you use action verbs to describe it. These are the best type of verbs to use because they move your story on and they create a certain amount of tension. They are divided into two categories:

Transitive

A transitive verb is followed by a direct object, i.e. that noun that receives the verb’s action. For example, “I stroked my dog.”

The verb is “stroked” while the direct object or noun is “my dog.”

On occasion, an object may be indirect, usually when you are expressing who the action is being done to, i.e. “Simon gave Jenny a kiss on the lips.”

The verb is “gave” and the indirect object is “Jenny” because that is who the object, “a kiss”, was given to.

Intransitive

If there is no indirect or direct object with the action verb, we call the verb intransitive. These are followed by adverbs. i.e. “Sammy runs away from the fire quickly.”

The verb is “runs” and “away from the fire quickly” is the adverb phrase, telling us about the action verb. There is no direct or indirect object.

If you are unsure whether a verb us transitive or intransitive, simply ask yourself, what receives the action from the verb. If there is a noun, it is transitive, if there isn’t a noun, it is intransitive.

Modal

Modal verbs are used to provide more help about the verb, providing hints that something could happen. Adding a modal verb gives us a verb phrase. The following words are classed as modal or helping verb:

Can

Could

May

Might

Must

Shall

Ought to

Should

Wood

Will

There are also helping verbs that consist of the forms:

To be

To do

To have

However, you should remember that these words can also be ‘linking’ verbs:

Am

Are

Be

Been

Being

Do

Did

Does

Had

Have

Has

Is

Where

Was

Linking verbs are used to connect your sentence subject to a describing adjective or noun, which is otherwise known as the ‘subject complement’, for example, “My son is a marketing genius.” The numerous forms of To Be, which include am, is, are, was, etc., are the most common verbs for linking. To Seem and To Become are always used as linking verbs but the following can be linking or action verbs, depending on how they are being used:

To appear

To continue

To feel

To grow

To look

To remain

To prove

To stay

To sound

To taste

To smell

To turn

As a linking verb – “the salmon smelled odd.”

As an action verb – “I smelled the salmon before I ate it.”

There you have it, verbs in a nutshell. Make sure you use verbs properly for the strongest possible meaning and your readers will be very happy.