Verbs are the parts of speech that show action or indicate a state of being. We put them with nouns, and we create complete sentences. Like nouns, verbs are foundational in our vocabulary, and we learned verbs as children shortly after we learned nouns. The following pages will help you learn more about verbs, as there really is a lot to consider when it comes to verbs, such as making our subjects and verbs agree, using active versus passive voice, and keeping our verbs in the same tenses.
We’ll explain the types of verbs first, to give you context and help you establish some “verb vocabulary,” but most writers will want to pay close attention to issues of tense, subject-verb agreement, and active versus passive voice in the pages that follow.