[Hong Kong - April 16, 2018] Continuing our mission to share with you our editing and proofreading knowledge, this week we will focus on another aspect of the English language – adverbs. Regardless of whether you’re an author, student, or business professional, you’ll have come across adverbs – even if you didn’t realize it. Our team of copywriters, editors, and proofreaders are all highly trained in the nuances of the English language and while it’s up to us to worry about the rules of editing and writing, we wanted to let you in on the specifics. We hope you find it interesting and that it will improve your own writing. It certainly helps to know the details when English editing.
Adverbs modify or describe a verb, adjective, another adverb, or whole sentence. As in:
“She shouted loudly.”
“It was very far.”
“The film ended too soon.”
“Luckily, I was prepared.”
Often, adverbs can end in -ly, but there are a few, such as fast or too that look the same as the adjective.
The first thing we are going to cover is how adverbs modify verbs. They do this by describing how something is happening. For example:
“Mark whispered quietly.”
“My dog growled angrily.”
“John quickly hurried downstairs.”
An easy way to check is to ask in what way is something happening in the sentence? How did Mark whisper? How did the dog growl? How did John go downstairs? Adverbs can also tell you other ways in which something was done – they can explain when and where something happened. As in:
“I got up late.”
“Steve jumped out there.”
However, there is a tricky type of verb that doesn’t work well with adverbs. These linking verbs, are words like: appear, smell, feel, sound, and seem. Usually, these words need adjectives and not adverbs. A good example is:
“He feels badly about it”
As feel is a verb, it looks as though an adverb is required, not an adjective. But feel is also a linking verb. Because an adverb describes how you perform the action and an adjective describes what you feel, saying “he feels badly about it” means that he is bad at feeling things i.e. touching. If you are trying to get across the idea that he is experiencing negative emotions, you need to say “he feels bad about it” instead.
Moving on, adverbs modify adjectives as well as other adverbs. Usually, this is to include a level of intensity to the adjective. Such as:
“The painting is very beautiful.”
“The sequel is less enjoyable than the first film.”
“The news is nearly always bad.”
With that last one there, nearly is modifying always, both are adverbs and both are modifying the word bad. You could even use several adverbs to describe other adverbs, however this usually results in poor sentences and a better way of saying it is often possible. It’s best to limit yourself to one or two adverbs at most.
There are instances when adverbs can modify an entire sentence. These are called sentence adverbs and they don’t focus on one particular aspect of the sentence, they describe an overall feeling about the whole subject of the sentence. Examples include:
“Luckily, I found my keys in my pocket.”
“Surprisingly, he hadn’t heard that before.”
“Sadly, it arrived too late.”
Similar to adjectives, adverbs also have levels of comparison; although it is less common to use them like this. An absolute adverb describes something in its own right. To form a comparative adverb you add the word more to the end of an adverb that ends in -ly. With a superlative adverb you add the word most. For example:
“He shouted loudly.” - Absolute adverb
“He shouted more loudly.” - Comparative adverb
“He shouted most loudly.” - Superlative adverb
However, as a general rule, it is usually advisable to choose a stronger adverb that more accurately describes what is going on, rather than fall back on comparative or superlative adverbs.
When using an adverb, it is important to place it as close as possible to the word being modifying. Otherwise you create an awkward sentence that could be more difficult for the reader to understand, or in some instances you might end up changing the meaning altogether. The word only is one of the most often misplaced. As in:
“David only watched the TV.”
“David watched only the TV.”
The first sentence says that David only watched the TV, he didn’t do anything else. The second sentence says that David watched the TV but didn’t watch anything else that may have been there. It’s a subtle difference but it does change the meaning of the sentence very slightly, and that could make all the difference to the reader and to what you meant to say.
When writing, it is impossible to avoid using adverbs. All writers use them but, while necessary, they should only be used occasionally. It is important to avoid using them unnecessarily. Instead of falling back on very or more, there is usually a better verb or adjective that you can use.
And that’s adverbs. For us as copywriters, editors, and proofreaders, the above is all second-nature. We hope that through these articles your writing will become stronger as you master the subtleties of the English language. As Nolan Bushnell once said, “Easy to learn and difficult to master”, and that is definitely the case with English. However, as we’ve said before, as editors it is our job to handle the spelling, grammar, and punctuation. We’ll do the copywriting, editing, and proofreading for you.