Silence of the Adverbs
Get Friendly With the Catch-All Part of Speech Writers Love to Hate
“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”
—Stephen King
Not all parts of speech are created equal. Not all parts of speech, in English, get equal treatment under the law. Right now, pronouns are having quite a day in the sun and I am in favor of that. It’s pronouns’ time to shine and I support them. This article is not about pronouns. Pronouns can do no wrong.
Of particular interest to me in my study of language is how not every language has the same parts of speech. English has eight, or it has nine, depending who you ask. Not every language has just one kind of adjective like we do. Not every language has prepositions at all. Even things English speakers think of as universal and fundamental to how we understand language, like the distinction between nouns and verbs, are up for debate. If you’re creating a science fiction or fantasy setting, spend some time thinking about how an alien or fantasy language might differ from English in fundamental ways in addition to how the vocabulary might be different. You don’t have to go full Tolkien.
Never go full Tolkien.
Today’s Shelf Life is about the mighty adverb: What it is, what it does, why it is so maligned, and how to understand the right and wrong times to drop adverbs into your writing.
An adverb is a part of speech, like an adjective or a noun or a verb. When I was growing up, we were taught that a noun is a word for a person, place, thing, or idea. (It is a little simpler to think of nouns as words for entities.) A verb is a word that describes an action, an occurrence, or a state of being. An adjective is a word that describes or modifies an entity (a noun or noun phrase). An adverb, then, logically, is a word that describes or modifies a verb.
Just kidding. An adverb can modify just about anything that isn’t a noun or noun phrase.
Adverbs can modify verbs: She sprinted quickly → quickly modifies the verb sprinted.
Adverbs can modify adjectives: She runs with truly beautiful form → truly modifies the adjective beautiful.
Adverbs can modify other adverbs: She sprinted very quickly → very modifies the adverb quickly.
Adverbs can modify an entire sentence: Honestly, the race was something to see! → honestly modifies the rest of the sentence.
To be an adverb is to receive a diagnosis of exclusion. This word isn’t any of the other parts of speech, so it’s an adverb.
How do you recognize an adverb? There’s no cheat sheet for this. With some parts of speech—for instance, the auxiliary verbs or the pronouns or the determiners/articles—you can just remember the words that fall into that category. “Her” will always be a pronoun. “The” will always be a definite article. Adverbs are trickier. A lot of them end in -ly, but that’s not a guarantee. Lovely ends in -ly, but it is an adjective (and sometimes, rarely, a noun).
As a rule of thumb, an adverb modifying a verb or verb phrase is an adjective of manner: It describes the manner of the verb, or some other specificity of the verb, such as the place or time or circumstance.
She sprinted quickly.
She sprinted here.
She’ll sprint tomorrow.
She sprints often.
An adverb modifying an adjective or another adverb is typically an adjective of degree:
She sprinted very fast.
She sprinted quite well, for a beginner.
She sprinted too far, and got tired.
That’s enough sprinting, for one day.
I’m tired just thinking about all the sprinting. The final big category of adverbs is the conjunctive adverb, the one that modifies a whole sentence or clause. They might be modifying a single clause, or they might be used to link two clauses together into one sentence.
Importantly, we learned from today’s article that sprinting isn’t for everyone.
She might be able to sprint all day and night; however, Catherine is not up for that level of activity.
So those are your three main types of adjective. My apologies to those readers for whom this information was remedial, but I think it was important for preparing for the main point of today’s article, which is this: A lot of writing advice out there states unequivocally to eliminate adverbs from your writing. Famous writers rag on adverbs and insist that the adverb is a tool used only by those who don’t know enough verbs. Online editing aids, like Hemingway Editor, will highlight all of your adverbs for you and give you a quota to meet. When I pasted the text of this article so far into the Hemingway app, it told me I have twenty-one adverbs and should aim for nine or fewer based on the length of my article. What’s the deal? Is the adverb just a part of speech you need to part with?
Some writers rely more on adverbs than other writers. I, for one, use a lot of adverbs. I like to think that I am using them well, but I know this is an area I could improve. When I read others’ writing for the purpose of editing or providing feedback, especially the writing of folks who are getting started with creative writing, I sometimes see an overreliance on adverbs. I’ve seen it enough that I’ve got some pocket advice for how to use adverbs well and I hope you’ll find it useful. Here’s the bottom line. There are some broad types of adverbs that you can always do without, some that you can often do without, and some that you cannot do without. The trick is knowing which kind are which, and how to work around the ones you can and should do without.
A note before we begin: This multistep process isn’t something you’re going to have to do every time you review your writing forever. As you practice examining your adverb usage, you’ll begin to spot them without the three-step process when you’re proofing your work. In time, you’ll begin to catch yourself as you write or type them, and skip them or sub in a better word where appropriate.
Step One: Find Your Adverbs
The first thing you need to do to get a handle on adverb use in a piece of your writing is to spot all those adverbs. Find each one and highlight it, underline it, mark it for your attention somehow. As I mentioned above, I like the Hemingway Editor app for this, as it will highlight most of your adverbs for you. Hemingway is great because you can work right in the web browser and you don’t need an account, and in my experience it has the most sophisticated algorithm for finding adverbs that you’re going to get outside of a paid program. Yes, it’s going to flag every -ly word as an adverb, but it will also pick up some adverbs that are not -ly constructions.
ProWritingAid, which requires an account, has both free and paid models. Within the free model, you may paste writing into the browser-based application and have it check for overused words. It’ll catch your -ly adverbs, but in my experience it’ll only get those ones and not others such as “very” or “too.” Grammarly, another popular online editing helper, will point out a lot of helpful things about your writing but it isn’t great about identifying your adverbs. For both ProWritingAid and Grammarly, I think you’d get just about the same level of effect from searching on “ly” in your word processor and highlighting what you find. Not every instance will be an adverb, and not every adverb will get found, but it’s a hefty start.
Once you’ve found all of your adverbs, it’s time to get them organized.
Step Two: Categorize Your Adverbs
Assuming you’ve found all or most of the adverbs in your piece of writing, go through and start cataloging them according to type. We talked about types above such as manner, degree, and conjunctive, but that’s not the type I mean in this case. We’re going to be cataloging them according to a four-tier system. I like to color code them: In red, adverbs to omit; in yellow, adverbs to replace; in purple, adverbs for individual review; in green, adverbs to keep.
So how can you decide which is which? Of each adverb you come across, ask yourself:
Does the meaning of the sentence change if I remove this word and do not add a new one?
If no, highlight it in red.
If yes, proceed to number 2.
Is it an -ly adverb describing how an action verb (not an auxiliary verb) happened or the nature of an adjective?
If yes, highlight it in yellow.
If no, proceed to number 3.
Is it an adverb emphasizing, amplifying, or downplaying something, or describing its extent or degree?
If yes, highlight it in purple.
If no, proceed to number 4.
Is it an adverb describing when or where an action happened?
If yes, highlight it in green.
Great, now you’ve got a good sense of what you’re working with. Catherine from Shelf Life believes that most problems in life can be solved if you just implement a detailed-enough cataloging system. Last things last: Let’s look at how to attack those yellows and purples.
Step Three: Eliminate Adverbs With Surgical Precision
Now you’ve got a beautiful assortment of red, yellow, purple, and green adverbs (or whatever color scheme or marking system you chose to use). Each specific type is going to necessitate its own action or sequence of actions, but even the obvious ones will require some consideration.
Adverbs in red are those that do not affect your sentence and can be removed without changing the meaning. For example,
A lot of writing advice out there states unequivocally to eliminate adverbs from your writing.
If I delete the word “unequivocally” from this sentence, what happens to my sentence? What I was trying to say was, “the advice on offer is unequivocal, they’re just advising a blanket approach.” Okay so there’s some tiny nuance there that may be lost if I delete “unequivocally.” But let’s be honest with each other:
A lot of writing advice out there states to eliminate adverbs from your writing.
Does the meaning of the sentence really change? It doesn’t. I’m still saying the same thing: Advice out there will tell you to remove your adverbs. In this case, unequivocally is an adverb that can be omitted without replacement to streamline my writing.
Does that mean I have to take it out? No. I want to look at the surrounding sentences and examine their complexity and length, and see if they, too, are adverb-laden. If the surrounding sentences are already sleek and streamlined, then this might be a great place to drop in a flavor word. But I also know that this is a word I can do without if I need to improve clarity or conciseness in this particular area.
In yellow are your -ly adverbs modifying action verbs adjectives: The woman ran nervously. The dog wagged its tail happily. Her words were painfully clear. The morning fog was oddly quiet. They are describing the way in which the action happened or the nature of the adjective. These adverbs, together with the verb or adjective they are modifying, should always be replaced by a single, more descriptive verb if you can find one.
If a woman is running nervously, perhaps she is scurrying or scuttling. A dog who is happily wagging might be swinging or waving its tail, while a dog who is wagging in a more tentative manner might be twitching its tail, and still further a dog who is wagging its tail in a fearful, nervous, or submissive way might be quivering or wavering its tail. A word that is painfully clear might be irrefutable—you want to refute it, but you cannot. And could a morning fog that is oddly quiet be better described as tranquil or still? What if it’s eerily quiet? In that case, it may be hushed or placid—or maybe none of those convey your exact meaning, and you need to stick with eerily.
When an adverb is modifying an action verb or an adjective, there’s often a more descriptive word that you can use to convey the meaning more vividly. That doesn’t mean that you should never use the -ly adverb + verb construction—but I recommend saving it for when you really can’t come up with a more precise verb that captures your meaning or mood. Most of these should be coming out.
Next up is your purple adverbs: The ones that emphasize, amplify, or downplay something, or describe the extent or degree of something. We’re going to look at these in two subgroups: The positives (amplifiers, emphasizers, intensifiers) and the negatives (downplayers, qualifiers).
I am absolutely certain about this. They were too sad to go on. The response was mildly inappropriate. These are intensifiers, and they’re not automatically bad guys. You don’t have to delete them wholesale.
When a word is already concrete and its synonyms don’t express degrees—as in “certain,” which means something is known for sure and beyond doubt—the only way to intensify it is with an adverb. Consider how many of these guys you have in your piece overall, and make sure you’re using them with discretion. If you’ve got one in every paragraph, that’s too many. If you’ve got one in every sentence, that’s way too many. Don’t intensify everything—you’ll fatigue your reader. These adverbs are like exclamation points. Save them for when you need a punch.
With downplayers and qualifiers—think mildly, slightly, somewhat, almost, only—you don’t have the same danger of fatiguing your reader. Some of them are going to be replaceable with a single-word construction—something that is mildly inappropriate might be unseemly or tactless, whereas something that is wildly inappropriate may be indecorous or regrettable.
The ones that qualify an action—she almost gave up on the job, they somewhat agreed with me—can be safely left in place and are often necessary. “I go to the movies on Mondays” and “I only go to the movies on Mondays” have different logical meanings. It’s not a matter of nuance. A person who goes to the movies on Mondays may also go to the movies on Thursdays, but a person who only goes to the movies on Mondays does not go to the movies on Thursdays. If somebody got murdered at the movies on Thursday, it makes a huge difference whether your character said “only” or not.
Finally, review your adverbs highlighted in green—the ones describing where or when an action took place. They went upstairs. She got here early. When did I last speak to you? What are you doing here? These adverbs are necessary most of the time. If you have a lot of simple ones, you could consider mixing them up by replacing a few with nominal constructions—so you’re modifying a noun with an adjective (her arrival was premature) instead of a verb with an adverb (she arrived early). Overall, though, this class of adverb is succinct and conveying meaningful, necessary information. These are fine to leave in. Put the axe down, Jack. All work and no play.
So that’s it. That’s my good word on the mighty adverb. If you go looking for adverb advice, you’re going to see a lot of entreaties to eliminate all of them from your writing and a lot of famous writers scoffing about how only bad writers need to use adverbs. Everybody needs adverbs.
I Googled some of Stephen King’s writing and found a list of his most highlighted passages on Kindle. The first one, his most highlighted passage of all, reads:
“But stupidity is one of two things we see most clearly in retrospect. The other is missed chances.”
“Most clearly.” Road to hell indeed.
I hope you enjoyed today’s Shelf Life. This week was all about word nerdery so I am planning to bring you something a little bit different when next Tuesday rolls around. In the meantime, I hope you will enjoy a pleasant weekend. Stay warm and stay hopeful.
If you have questions that you'd like to see answered in Shelf Life, ideas for topics that you'd like to explore, or feedback on the newsletter, please feel free to contact me. I would love to hear from you.
For more information about who I am, what I do, and, most important, what my dog looks like, please visit my website.
After you have read a few posts, if you find that you're enjoying Shelf Life, please recommend it to your word-oriented friends.
This article makes so much more sense to me after reading today's article "Greater Than the Sum, Part I" (April, 20th 2021). You are amazing at teaching writing. Whether you want to admit it or not. It's helped me make leaps and bounds in my writing, and it's only going to keep improving from this amazing blog and all of your posts. Thank you ShelfLife!