A cautionary love letter to adverbsI’ve read a lot of advice over the years telling me to ditch the adverbs. Mostly. (See what I did there?) “Too many adverbs means you use weak verbs.” (Rude!) But I simply adore a good adverb. Maybe because I read the Harry Potter series every year and JK Rowling has a reputation for her adverb-iage. (140 per every 10,000 words!) Some say you should only use one adverb for every 300 words, max. (That’s about 33 in every 10,000 if you wanted to compare to Ms. Rowling.) But, as one of the four main word classes (alongside nouns, verbs, and adjectives), why shouldn’t adverbs get their time to shine? Where adjectives describe nouns, adverbs can offer more details about verbs, adjectives, and even other adverbs. That said, sometimes I can see the problem. Take this sentence, for example: You could argue that a stronger action verb would make the sentence more interesting. Like so: Both say the same thing, but the second not only sounds more interesting but uses fewer words. In her book Line by Line, Claire Kehrwald Cook calls out a few specific adverbs to avoid: ⓧ very ⓧ truly ⓧ really ⓧ actually ⓧ extremely She says these verbs get so much overuse that people tend to ignore them anyway, plus they weaken your verb. To say that “Xx drug has extremely mild side effects” is confusing and the adverb doesn’t add anything. You also have to watch out for other adverb forms with no “-ly” suffix, like “just” and “quite.” Buuuuut. I must use adverbs when I speak because they love to sneak into my writing. Sneakily. And while I will try to hold to that 1/300 rule, I think my adverbs reflect my personality, so I plan to leave in as many as possible. How do you feel about adverbs? Tell me here.
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