"being" (from user shobujgmat)

[RonPurewal]

a user asked, in a different folder, for some clarification on the use and misuse of "being".

here are a couple of pointers:

* "being" is generally correct when it's grammatically necessary, as in the case of passive-voice constructions.
example: "being shot is not fun." --> this is the best way to write this. because it's written in the passive voice (it's a form of "to be shot", not "to shoot"), the "being" is integral to the construction.

* "being" can be necessary for proper parallelism with other -ing forms.
example: "we were punished for staying out late, hosting loud parties, and being naughty in general."[/i]
in this case, you can't write this third item in any other way without breaking parallelism.

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* "being" is INCORRECT if it's just a long-winded way of expressing that something IS something - in other words, to EXPRESS IDENTITY.
wrong: being a student, joe is entitled to a 10% discount at the theater.
correct: joe, a student, is entitled to.. or because joe is a student, he is entitled to...

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i'm sure these pointers don't cover all possible cases of "being", but they probably cover most of them.

in any case, i can't say this enough: STUDY THE FORM OF CORRECT ANSWERS. EVERYTHING IN AN OFFICIALLY CORRECT ANSWER IS CORRECT. therefore, anything else that looks just like anything in an officially correct answer is also correct.
simply noting the FORM OF EACH CORRECT ANSWER that you encounter will probably get you much farther along than will trying to elucidate obscure rules, although you should of course make a good-faith effort to figure out such rules where they do exist.

you should also study the form of incorrect answers, but only if you know for sure that certain parts are incorrect. remember, everything in a correct answer must be correct, but everything in an incorrect answer is not necessarily incorrect!
(i.e., the worst thing that could possibly happen would be for you to conclude that some construction is incorrect, based on its appearance in an incorrect answer, and then rule it out somewhere else, only to find out later that the issue in the first problem lay somewhere else.)