Writers, especially beginning
writers, are often cautioned against using passive voice in their writing
because its use slows down the pace.
Another construction that can
make your writing plod is the dummy subject.
When we use the words it
and there to begin a sentence without a referent (a noun the pronoun is
referring to), we’re using a dummy subject.
In this pair of sentences:
I went to see Fantastic Four
2 over the weekend. It was fun, but mostly forgettable.
“It” refers to the movie Fantastic
Four 2. The pronoun has a referent.
In this sentence, however:
It is apparent that oil reserves
will be exhausted by 2050.
“It” has no referent, and is
therefore a dummy subject.
The same thing happens
frequently with there:
There are several ways in which
you could begin.
There are five stages of grief.
Dummy subjects are just one of
many problems that weaken your writing by making it vague, fuzzy, and
indefinite. The sentences above can be reconstructed with stronger, more
definite subjects:
Some experts warn that our oil
reserves will be exhausted by 2050.
You could begin in one of the
following ways: (followed by a list).
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross identified
five stages of grief in her book On Death and Dying.
In general, unless you don’t
know who is performing an action, or you want to emphasize the action of the sentence
for some reason, you should avoid dummy subjects.
