Avoid vague verbs like "understand" or "know" because it can be difficult to come to consensus about how the goal can be measured.
Use commanding action verbs, not vague phrases like "Be prepared" or "Know what you want to do".
The vague, versatile, and "Swiss-knife" verb "to be" is as ambiguous in English as it is in many other languages.
The downside, made more apparent over 500-plus pages, is that it can also be flippant, overcute (especially in endings), lazy and unresistant, with a preponderance of passive verbs and spritzing of vague positive adjectives.
Like Blair's verb-free sentences, they express a vague aspiration, in language so distant from everyday speech that they convey only an unformed, inchoate desire.
However, we often find cases in which the temporal information is absent or vague as when the occurrence time is represented by means of a verb tense, for example: At least 45 people have died of malaria in Jalpaiguri and Coochbehar Districts of North Bengal, senior health department officials said on Thursday.
All the verbs here – "meet responsibilities", "champion", "project values", "advocate", "continue to act" – are vague and aspirational.
Claudia's main reason for running away is, vaguely, "injustice," and when the narration shifts to Jamie's perspective Konigsburg uses "sculpture" as a verb.
Business writers who create verbs out of nouns and try to make up new fancy-sounding words and phrases that are vague and meaningless do not realize that they just create a lot of hot air.
