What an expletive construction is
“There is,” “there are,” “it is … that” — grammarians call these expletive constructions, and style advice has been telling writers to avoid them for decades. That advice is too broad to be useful on its own. Plenty of style rules that say “avoid X” are giving advice that oversimplifies a real trade-off, and this is one of them: an expletive construction is sometimes the clearest way to write a sentence, and sometimes a sign the real subject went missing.
There are four required fields on this form.
Nothing is wrong with that sentence. “Four required fields” is genuinely the subject worth naming, and “there are” is just the grammatical scaffolding that lets the sentence lead with it. Rewriting it to avoid “there are” — “Four required fields exist on this form” — doesn’t improve anything. It just avoids a pattern for its own sake.
What “there is” and “there are” actually do
“There is” and “there are” push the real subject of the sentence later, after the verb, and put a placeholder — “there” — in the grammatical subject slot instead. “It is … that” does something similar: “it” holds the subject position while the actual content waits until after “that.”
There is a lot of confusion about this setting. It is clear that the deadline needs to move.
In both cases, the sentence works by delaying its real content. That delay is sometimes exactly what a sentence needs — it’s how English puts new information at the end of a sentence, where a reader naturally expects emphasis to land. And sometimes the delay is just padding, and the sentence would be more direct with the real subject moved to the front.
How to test a “there is” sentence
Ask what the real subject would be if you rewrote the sentence without “there is” or “it is … that.” Then ask whether that subject deserves to lead the sentence.
There is a lot of confusion about this setting. This setting confuses people.
The second version is shorter and puts “this setting” — the actual topic — in the subject position where it belongs. If the sentence is really about the setting, the rewrite is an improvement.
There is no evidence that the change caused the outage.
Rewriting this one is harder, because there’s no single clean subject waiting to take the lead role — “no evidence” isn’t a natural sentence-opener, and forcing one produces something more awkward, not less: “No evidence exists that the change caused the outage” doesn’t read any better. Here, “there is” is doing legitimate work: introducing a claim about existence, which is exactly what the construction is for.
Why a concrete count changes the answer
“There are” earns its place when the sentence exists to report a quantity.
There are 12 factory settings, all documented in the appendix.
A number after “there are” tends to settle the question in favor of leaving it alone. “12 factory settings” isn’t a subject that benefits from being moved to the front — the sentence’s job is to report a count, and “there are [number]” is the most direct way to do that in English. Rewriting it to avoid the construction, like “12 factory settings exist,” reads like an artifact of someone following a style rule rather than writing a natural sentence.
Why this rule never says a sentence is wrong
Passive voice and nominalizations get flagged with real confidence, because there’s usually a clearly better alternative sitting right next to the flagged text. Expletive constructions don’t work that way — “There are four required fields” and “Four required fields are required” (a worse rewrite) show that the “fix” isn’t automatically an improvement. That’s why this pattern is always flagged as worth a look, never as a defect: the honest answer depends on what the sentence is actually trying to emphasize, and only the writer knows that.
A side-by-side comparison
Seeing both outcomes next to each other makes the judgment call easier to apply. Here are four sentences where the same construction gets a different verdict each time:
There are three ways to configure this. → Leave it. “Three ways” is a genuine count, and there’s no natural single subject to promote in its place.
There is a problem with the deployment. → Rewrite it. “The deployment has a problem” or, more directly, “The deployment failed” puts the real subject where a reader expects it.
It is likely that the fix will ship Friday. → Rewrite it. “The fix will likely ship Friday” says the same thing with one fewer clause and no placeholder subject.
There is nothing more to add. → Leave it. Forcing a subject onto “nothing” produces a stranger sentence than the one it was meant to fix.
Notice the pattern: the construction survives when the alternative subject is abstract, negative, or otherwise awkward to promote to the front of the sentence, and it’s worth rewriting when a concrete, nameable subject is sitting right there in the sentence already, just buried after the verb.
A quick way to test any instance
Try the rewrite and read both versions out loud. If the rewritten version sounds more natural and loses nothing, use it. If the rewrite sounds forced, or if you had to invent an awkward subject just to avoid “there is,” the original was already the better sentence. This is the same philosophy behind every rule on this site: the test is whether the alternative actually reads better, not whether the original matches a pattern on a list of things to avoid.
Check your own writing
Run your text through the filler & throat-clearing cutter to see every “there is/are” and “it is … that” construction flagged, each with a prompt to check for a stronger subject rather than an assertion that something’s wrong. Constructions followed immediately by a number are left alone entirely, since a concrete count is usually the clearest phrasing available. For the related pattern of sentence-openers that add no information at all, see throat-clearing openers.