Speaker 1: Hey high-value writers, I have a question for you. Who's your sentence about? Have you ever written a sentence that kind of wasn't about anyone? Unfortunately, it's easy to do, and that's what we're going to look at today, making sure our sentences are actually about somebody doing something. All right, who is your sentence about? With these four examples, we can tell really well. Teachers need more classroom supplies. Our office reopens Wednesday. Their supervisor declined their PTO request. Leadership asked me to attend. In each of those, I can clearly see who did the action. I know who my doer is. I know who my subject is. I know who my main character is. And the second one was not a person. It was a place, and that's fine. The office was the one doing something in that case. However, it's easy to accidentally write in a way sometimes that does not start with a real doer. We could have written these in a less clear manner by starting with words like it, this, or their. It's important to get more classroom supplies. This is to inform you about our office reopening. There isn't an approval for this PTO request, and it was required by leadership that we attend. In each of those, you can hear the idea that, well, who really asked for that? Who really did that? It's just it. It's just out there. Looking at that, our doer would be it, this, their, it, and those are not doers, right? What we want to do is make sure we have a real doer instead of what I call a phantom doer, where we start with something that we think, well, it's a noun, but maybe it's not the one doing anything, or maybe it's an empty word like their. With these four examples of the phantom doer, we already see above what the sentence would look like with a real doer, but we're going to run through them real quickly, too, just to note we've got more than one option every time we revise a sentence. So let's take those four phantom doer-led sentences and look at what other doers we could add instead. First one, it's important to get more classroom supplies. Well, we could make it about we. We need more supplies. This classroom needs more supplies. Teachers need more supplies. Lots of options. This is to inform you about our office reopening. Who's doing something? Kind of the office. The Safety Center office reopens Tuesday, or we can make it about the customer. You can visit the office starting Tuesday. Third one, there isn't an approval for this PTO request. Who's doing something? Maybe the request wasn't approved, but who really didn't approve it? Maybe it was HR. We name who really took or did not take the action. And lastly, it was required by leadership that we attend. Was it it who asked us? No, leadership asked us, and we are here because of the requirement. So as you're writing, if you find a sentence with a phantom doer, dig through there to find out who or what really did the action. Put them in the front and make sure you have a concrete doer instead. A whole lot easier for your reader. Alright, thanks for being here. If you like what you're learning, please click subscribe so we can keep these videos coming to you, and I'll see you really soon.

Speaker 2: you