Our brains react to nouns and verbs in different ways, and it's now thought that this is because we actually use different parts of our brain when we learn about nouns and verbs. This could explain why children learn nouns before verbs, and adults also perform better and react faster to nouns during cognitive tests. Our brains are also about three times larger than those of our ancestors that lived 2-4 million years ago. Just how did our brains get so big? Well, it seems that thinking about word formation has a lot to do with brain growth.

Using special magnetic resonance imaging, researchers looked at different parts of the brain while subjects had to work out the meaning of a sentence using new, replacement words for everyday verbs and nouns. The test investigated how we acquire new vocabulary throughout our lives. When participants were learning new nouns, the part of the brain that is associated with visual and object processing, was activated. New verbs activated part of the brain associated with semantic and conceptual aspects and the part that is involved in processing grammar. In addition, activation of other specific parts of the brain was associated with how well people learned new nouns, but not verbs.

Or to put it another way: we think in verbs. The more verbs in a sentence, the easier our brains can decipher the meaning of what is being said. And this is just one reason why we should all relearn how to write using more verbs. To do this, it's a good idea to go through your Word documents and identify any verbs you have used into three groups: active, passive and hidden. We talk in active verbs, but we tend to forget that they are also easier and faster to read. This is because most of us are taught to write using passive verbs. The difference between and active and passive verb is the word order.

If you are using Microsoft Office Word 2010, passive verbs will be highlighted with a green wavy line throughout your Word document. Take a look at the following sentence: five designs must be completed before the blueprint is submitted. Now look at this sentence: the designer must complete five designs before submitting the blueprints. The second sentence is much easier to understand, and it's less clumsy. This is because of the use of the active verb in the second sentence.

Obviously it's good practice to use much more active than passive verbs, but there are occasions where it's unavoidable to use the passive; and they can help with the delivery of your message. For example, when you don't need to identify the subject; or to emphasise something. The sentence "£1m was saved in the department last year", has more impact than saying "the department saved £1m last year". Even though the information is exactly the same, the passive verb in the first example adds that extra punch.

Similarly, if you need to soften the blow a bit, for example when delivering a piece of information in a letter, then use the passive. "An extra charge will be made" is less blameless than "we are charging extra". Think of the politicians' passive admission: "mistakes were made" − it's never the case that they admit who made those mistakes.

Word 2010 comes with an array of professional tools to help you edit all of your documents, finding those grammatical errors and spelling mistakes with easy to use search and replace, and formatting tools. In Word 2010 you can copy and paste content in many formats and there's an advanced preview before you paste facility.

And also new in Word 2010, are advanced editing techniques allowing you to quickly find your way around long documents such as tthe new Document Navigation pane. Search tools enable you to quickly find your way through long documents. It's easy to reorganise your documents by dragging and dropping headings instead of copying and pasting. And you can find content by using incremental search, so you do not need to know exactly what you are searching for to find it.

Another way to trim your writing is to look for hidden verbs. A hidden verb is a verb that is 'hidden' inside a noun. We tend to talk using verbs, but often change these verbs to nouns when we write. For example the verb combine is frequently changed into the noun combination. Hidden verbs can be useful if you need your text to 'linger' or to inflate the tone of your message. When you think "we decided the issue", you will often turn this into "we have made a decision about the issue". Try to use more verbs to create a better writing style. Look out for the -ion, -ment that shows a verb has been made into a noun. Cut out the clumsiness by looking for sentence structures containing, "of" or "about" and replace with the verb.