Are Adverbs Evil?

Writers use adverbs. From great writers to horrible writers, best sellers to those who will never be published, every writer uses adverbs.

So why do so many writers hate adverbs? Why do you so often see the advice to avoid them?

What Are Adverbs?

Hopefully you already know this one. Much like an adjective modifies a noun, an adverb is “a word or phrase that modifies or qualifies an adjective, verb, or other adverb or a word group, expressing a relation of place, time, circumstance, manner, cause, degree, etc.” A lot of folks think adverbs only modify verbs, but note that they can modify other things too, including adjectives.

For example: The dog ran quickly down the road.

Here’s, it’s obvious that quickly is an adverb. It tells us how the dog ran.

Example 2: The cat had unusually shiny fur.

Here, shiny is an adjective (it modifies the noun, fur), while unusually is an adverb that modifies the adjective (it modifies shiny, telling us more about the shininess of the fur).

Many adverbs are easy to spot because they end in -ly, but not all of them do.

Why Are They Bad?

So, if adverbs exist (and they certainly do), and every writer uses them, why do they tell you not to use them?

The answer isn’t that adverbs are evil. They are overused. In particular, they are used to shore up weak verbs or adjectives, rather than finding a stronger word to begin with.

Back to our first example. The dog ran quickly down the road.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with the sentence. By itself, it’s a perfectly understandable sentence. But as authors, we’re not going just for understandable. We want to craft lyrical, amazing sentences that capture the reader’s attention and make them say, “Wow, this is an incredible story!”

So how do we do that? Use stronger, more descriptive nouns and adjectives.

The dog dashed down the road. The dog scampered down the road. The dog raced down the road.

Every one of these sentences conveys a sense of running quickly, but because speed is already built into the verbs, no adverb is needed. We don’t need to write that the dog raced quickly down the road, because it’s difficult to imagine that it raced slowly down the road.

Overused Adverbs

Here’s a short list of frequently overused (and misused) adverbs:

very

really

totally

literally

often

actually

probably

suddenly

usually

kind of

extremely

truly

hopefully

perfectly

There are many others that you might overuse yourself, but these tend to be common to many writers. And in many cases, they can be eliminated.

Adverbs Aren’t Evil

There is nothing wrong with adverbs. They exist for a reason. But if you overuse them, your writing will look sloppy and amateur. Cut as many as you can, so that the adverbs you do choose to keep enhance your writing, rather than detract from it.

One rule of thumb is no more than one adverb per 300 words of text. For a standard letter-sized page, doubled spaced, 1” margins, and 12-point font, that means about one adverb per page.

If you use a few more, you may be safe. If you use a lot more, be prepared for criticism.

But don’t ever let anyone tell you that you can’t use any adverbs at all. They’re part of the language, and they aren’t evil.

C. Wombat