Poor Old Adverbs—They are so Misused

rogersgeorge on November 2nd, 2017

First, I see now that we’re using adjectives as verbs! “Harsh,” an adjective, is now in style as a verb: “Don’t harsh my, um whatever.” I suppose “criticize” has become too long a word for some folks to use. Harrumpf.

But now that I mentioned verbs and adjectives, that leads to adverbs, another word that adjectives frequently replace. Here’s a Pickles to illustrate:

I don’t often see the guy correctly correcting the gal’s grammar in the comics, but in this case, he’s right. This mistake is easy to make; adjectives are typically shorter than their adverbial counterpart. See the reference to “harsh” above.

Now, having defended the adverb, I have to add that you can usually skip adverbial constructions correct or incorrect altogether. That comic isn’t a good example of leaving out adverbs (they’re used substantively here, but I digress), but most of the time, you make your writing tighter and punchier when you leave out the adverbs and use a good verb, one better than “make” and “do.” And please, try never to use “very”!

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