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There + To Be

    March 9, 2025
    + 12

    Don’t start a sentence with "there" and a form of the verb "to be":

    • There is

    • There are

    • There were

    • There was

    These constructions hide the true subject and verb of the sentence, resulting in weaker writing.

    How To Avoid There Is

    To avoid the "there is" construction, try:

    • To remove "there is."

    • To move the true subject and verb from the end of the sentence.

    • To create a subject for the sentence.

    For example:

    There are multiple variables that store the result.

    To remove the "there are," you could do any of the following, depending on the context of your sentence:

    Multiple variables store the result.

The `x` and `y` variables store the result.

You can store the result in multiple variables.

Store the result in multiple variables.

    For more examples, see the Google Tech Writing course.