Your English teacher probably called them passive verbs but I think “victim” paints a clearer picture of what they’ll do to your copy. It also nicely sums up what you’re looking for—sentences where something is happening TO the subject, instead of the subject making something happen.

But whatever you call them, victim verbs make your copy blah, wordy and harder to read. And that’s never good when it comes to marketing.

To give you a better idea of what I mean, here are two examples…

Passive:  The ghost was chased by Scooby.

Active:  Scooby chased the ghost.

And…

Passive:  By then, the sandwich will have been eaten. (The sentence implies who’s doing the eating.)

Active:  By then, Shaggy will have eaten the sandwich.

See the difference?  Here’s a hint–you probably have a victim verb if:

• The word “by” closely follows the verb

• You have “been” or some form of “to be” combined with another verb

Either way, just rearrange the sentence to eliminate those words and you should be good to go.

Here’s another tip–your word processing software may tell you how many victim verbs you have.

In Microsoft Word (2003 and before), go to Tools, Spelling & Grammar and check the box for Readability Statistics. After the grammar check runs you’ll see a bunch of stats including the percentage of passive sentences.

In Microsoft Word 2007, go to the Office menu (top left), click on Word Options, then Proofing, check the boxes next to “Check grammar with spelling” and  ”Show Readability Statistics.”  Click OK, go to the Review tab and click on Spelling & Grammar.

Of course, none of these tips are foolproof (including Word’s grammar tool) but they should help you put a bunch of victim verbs to rest so your copy is more alive and persuasive.