Now that the US is withdrawing its military forces from Iraq, we’re hearing a lot about “troops” returning home. Has anyone besides me noticed that “troops” is being used in a new way, as a synonym for “soldier”?

For example, here’s an excerpt from the December 15 New York Times:

Although Thursday’s ceremony represented the official end of the war, the military still has two bases in Iraq and roughly 4,000 troops, including several hundred who attended the ceremony. At the height of the war in 2007, there were 505 bases and more than 170,000 troops.

Every dictionary I’ve checked, including the venerable Oxford English Dictionary and the brand-new 5th edition of the American Heritage Dictionary, sticks to old definitions of “troop” as a military group or a Girl Scout or Boy Scout unit.

Lexicographers (the people who edit and update dictionaries) constantly scan books, magazines, and newspapers to ferret out new uses for old words. No one, however, seems to have commented on this usage of “troop.”

Which doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Dictionaries, by their very nature, always lag behind current usage. Changes in our language don’t go into dictionaries until they’ve been around for a while.

My hunch is that this use of “troop” will be around as long as countries keep sending soldiers into combat – a practice that, alas, shows no signs of ending.

Here’s a sentence with a pronoun problem that my husband and I found in the draft of a gardening column he was writing:

Mulch heavily and add to it annually.  INDEFINITE PRONOUN REFERENCE

The it is an indefinite pronoun reference. It doesn’t refer to a specific thing earlier in the sentence.

This might seem puzzling: “It” clearly refers to mulch, and there’s the word m-u-l-c-h four words earlier in the sentence:

Mulch heavily and add to it annually.

Nice try, but wrong. Mulch in this sentence is a verb (action), not a thing.

Here’s how we corrected the sentence:

Apply mulch heavily, and add to it annually.  CORRECT

Here’s an instant lesson in passive voice: How to recognize it, why you should avoid it (most of the time), and how to fix it.

The first step is to understand what passive voice is (and what it is not – a problem even for some professional writers). Compare these two sentences:

Jake threw the ball. ACTIVE

The ball was thrown by Jake. PASSIVE

In general, your sentences should tell who did what. Avoid roundabout verbs (is being baked by, was written by):

The cake for the wedding is being baked by Joellen. PASSIVE

Joellen is baking the cake for the wedding. ACTIVE

This essay was written by Jon. PASSIVE

Jon wrote this essay. ACTIVE

Active voice is usually a better choice than passive voice. There are exceptions, however. Sometimes you want to focus on what happened, not the person who did it. Passive voice can be useful in these situations:

Dirty dishes were left in the sink last night. PASSIVE

The money was stolen early Tuesday morning. PASSIVE

Simple enough…or at least it should be simple. Problems frequently arise because writers don’t always identify passive voice accurately.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that every was or is signals passive voice. Compare these two sentences:

Jane was shopping for a wedding gift. ACTIVE

A wedding gift was bought by Jane. PASSIVE

Another warning: Don’t assume that you need to put an active person into every sentence. The examples below are active voice even though they don’t feature active people:

A new way to format the article occurred to me. ACTIVE

That happens to Mary at least once a week. ACTIVE

The software quickly became outdated. ACTIVE

This behavior must stop. ACTIVE

Mom is resting. ACTIVE

Even professional writers sometimes experience confusion about passive voice. Paul Payack declared that Barack Obama was using passive voice when he said, “There will be setbacks.” Not true! Statements beginning with there (there is, there were, there will be) are active voice:

There were three items on the meeting agenda. ACTIVE

There will be no meeting tonight. ACTIVE

Taking a few moments to learn what passive voice is – and, equally important, what it isn’t – can help you ensure that your writing is vigorous and concise.

Jean Reynolds, Ph.D., is a longtime English professor, a Shaw scholar, and the author of eleven published books.

Welcome to the Writing Revolution! The resources on this website will help you bypass jargon and complicated explanations to start becoming a better writer right away. You can expect to experience two revolutions: One in the content you’ll be learning, and the other in your growth as a writer.

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I came across a troublesome sentence as I was reading Secrets and Wives, a book about polygamy by Sanjiv Bhattacharya. The author is discussing Sister Wives, a TLC reality show about Cody Brown and his polygamous family:

When the Utah authorities threatened to charge Brown with bigamy after the show aired, it merely encouraged the cable network to book them for a second season.  AWKWARD

A copyeditor should have fixed that sentence. The problem is it, an ordinary word that can cause immense problems.

Let’s reread the sentence up to it merely encouraged. Notice what your brain is doing while you’re reading:

When the Utah authorities threatened to charge Brown with bigamy after the show aired, it merely encouraged

Here’s what I was thinking: The Utah authorities encouraged….

Wait a minute! The Utah authorities weren’t encouraging the Browns to prosecute polygamy. And Utah authorities is plural. You can’t refer to them as it. What’s going on here?

Backtracking to the beginning of the sentence, I started over, more slowly. Aha! It in this sentence is a vague word that doesn’t refer to anything–as if you said “It’s raining.”

Bad writing. You shouldn’t have to read a sentence twice to figure it out. And here’s a more important principle: A sentence should state who did what. In this sentence about the Browns, The Learning Channel decided to renew the show for a second season. Say so!

Here’s a better version of the sentence (notice that I’m using one of my favorite tricks for fixing awkward sentences: Make it two sentences).

The Utah authorities threatened to charge Brown with bigamy after Sister Wives aired. Instead of backing away from the controversy, The Learning Channel responded by renewing the show for a second season.  BETTER

Grammarians have a name for the problem we’re discussing: indefinite pronoun reference. Here’s a simple way to avoid the problem: Always make sure that it refers to something specific that you’ve already named.

(To learn more about using “it” in a sentence, click here.)

If you scan the Table of Contents or index of a typical English grammar book, you’ll come across this phrase: Making nouns agree in number and case.

What does that mean, and how do you do it? Here’s a handy example I came across today in an article about blogging:

Feed readers work in a similar way. Open it up, and all of the blogs you subscribe to will show up, with the latest content at the top, usually with just the headline and maybe the first few lines of the blog post displaying.  INCORRECT

The first sentence is about feed readers – more than one – but the next sentence begins with “Open it up”–one thing.

Here’s how I would fix it:

A feed reader works in a similar way. Open it up, and all of the blogs you subscribe to….  CORRECT

That was easy!