Before the end of 2020, I just wanted to share an online text analyzing tool that might help your writing: Aztekera’s “To Be” Verb Analyzer. I review this neat tool to use when you need a quick way to check how often and whether you overuse the verb “to be.”
Purpose of the Text Analyzer
According to Aztekera:
The active voice and passive voice are different grammatical formats of expressing the same idea. (…) The active voice is more direct, concise and engaging. “To be” verbs, such as “is,” “was” and “were” are indicators of the passive voice. Theoretically, a lower (number) of “to be” (< 20% of sentences) indicates better writing.
To help writers control passive voice overuse, this text analyzer detects and prints out every sentence that uses “to be” and its variant forms.
How to Use the Text Analyzer
Go to https://www.aztekera.com/tools/tobeverbs, copy and paste your text in the designated box, and click on the check button. This last action:
- clears the designated box,
- prints in red a list of every sentence that uses a form of “to be,” and
- prints in black the total number of times “to be” was used, the total number of sentences and the percentage of sentences that uses “to be.”
What I Did with the Text Analyzer
I used Aztekera’s text analyzer to compare the “to be” usage in my own posts in this blog with that in a series of manuscripts from an EFL author X before and after my edits. Table 1 shows the results:
Table 1 confirms the two impressions I had writing my own blogposts and editing author X’s manuscript:
- The 26 % “to be” sentences shows that it’s easier to keep the “to be” usage low from the start. Because my blog is about good practice in writing academic prose, I make a point not to use either the passive voice, or the copula when I write my first draft.
- The 76 and 57 % “to be” sentences show that it’s much harder to reduce the “to be” usage down to the recommended 20 % from a first draft with a high usage percentage.
My Recommendations
- Be strict in avoiding “to be” at the start of the writing process.
- Use the Aztekera text analyzer to aim for 20 % “to be” usage guideline in your first draft.
- Don’t worry about the 20 % guideline when editing the first draft—a natural sounding text should have a higher percentage.
Things You Need to Know
Analysis method. Aztekera does not mention the method. Most likely the developers used a Python-based platform (e.g., Natural Language Toolkit or spaCy) to build the text analyzer.
Undercount of sentences. This text analyzer uses the period (full stop) to detect sentences. This means a sentence without a period (e.g., a title) is included into the next sentence that has a period, causing undercount. My guess is the developers used this approach to accommodate copying and pasting from pdf, where unwanted returns mid sentence are the norm. Solutions: for short text under 1000 words, add the periods where appropriate. The effects of the undercount should be less significant for longer texts.
Different types of “to be.” This analyzer makes no distinction between the different types of “to be,” such as:
- a copula,
- an auxiliary for the passive voice, or
- an auxiliary for the present/past perfect.
Solutions: this isn’t much of a problem if you’re writing an academic piece, since this type of prose rarely uses the present/past perfect. If you’re writing in a different register, make sure you discount the present/past perfect in the active voice.
Conclusions
The Aztekera text analyzer is a neat tool for counting the number of time authors use the verb “to be.” Use it to minimize the “to be” usage when writing your first draft. This practice at the start of the writing process will result in a concise final draft that sounds natural.
That said, goodbye 2020 (good riddance!). Happy holidays, and see you all in 2021, cheers!