“There are” Better Ways

Today, a simple method to strengthen your writing. My seventh-grade composition teacher taught me this, and it’s stuck like glue ever since: never, ever use “there is” or “there are” if you can possibly avoid it. Exceptions to this exist, of course, but they are fewer and farther between than you may think. “There is” and “there are” constructions almost inevitably weaken your writing.

Examples:

Weak: There is a printer that sits on the desk by the computer.

Stronger: A printer sits on the desk by the computer.

Weak: There is a hiring process in place that keeps us from accidentally hiring unqualified applicants.

Stronger: Our hiring process keeps us from accidentally hiring unqualified applicants.

Note that in both the above examples, two things happen: 1) the word “that” is also deleted (sometimes along with other weak sentence elements as in the second example) and 2) the verb immediately following the “that” suddenly takes on a more direct and active role, because it’s not separated from the subject by filler anymore.

Exceptions and limitations exist, of course. (I could have written “There are exceptions, of course,” but I don’t think this instance is one of them.) One of them is in the first sentence of this paragraph — that being that you’ll encounter sentences in which, if you remove the “there is” construction, you’ll be left with the verb “exists” and precious few other choices. Sometimes “exists” (or one of its forms) is a good choice, as in the first sentence of this paragraph. Other times, not so much:

Weak: “There’s no air in here!”

Worse: “No air exists in here!” (Yich!)

You’ll usually encounter this problem when the verb in the sentence is a form of “to be.” You have a couple of choices, then. First, you can decide that the “there is” construction says what you want it to say in the way you want to say it. This certainly happens. Here’s an example:

“There is a tide in the affairs of men /Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune,” by none other than William Shakespeare.

Or you might have a character who has to deliver some bad news.

“There’s no easy way to say this,” he said. “I could say, “no easy way to say this exists,” but that would sound stilted.”

Clearly, the first is the more natural choice. So you might choose to leave it.

The other choice you have is radical editing:

“There’s no easy way to say this,” he said. “Except I think I’ll say ‘this is really hard for me to say’ or ‘it’s just killing me to tell you this’ or even ‘I have some bad news’ instead. And earlier, when I was complaining about the lack of air in this room, what I really meant to say was ‘Man, it’s close in here. I’ve never been in such an airless place in my life!’”

See? There are choices. I mean, choices exist!

~ by seriouswriter on June 9, 2007.