From the Editor’s Desk: Adverb Boot Camp

We’ve been discussing on the blog whether and under what circumstances one finds it acceptable to violate conventional grammar rules. A good example of my “Never say never, but . . .” attitude toward breaking the rules concerns the use of adverbs. Let’s take a moment to understand why many writers and editors often give the side-eye to adverbs:

Consider a simple sentence: “The boy ran up the hill.” It’s got everything a sentence needs: a subject (“The boy”), a verb (“ran”) and in this case, an object (“the hill”). It is, grammatically, a perfect sentence. The problem, of course, is that it’s flat. It just lays there, inspiring little thought or reflection in readers. The reason that it lays there is because it is bereft of information. We know nothing about this boy, why or how he ran, or anything about the hill he traversed. The sentence needs more information to be interesting. How might we make it more interesting?
 
Enter the adverb: The boy ran up the hill quickly. The boy ran up the hill rapidly. The boy ran up the hill courageously. The boy ran up the hill sadly.
 
All of these sentences add more information than what we started with, and in that sense they are better. They remain grammatically correct. The problem is that they are not as good as they might be. We’ve added one whole word for only marginal gains in information. How do add more information without adding unnecessary words? Say it with me, writers: Focus on the VERB!
 
Instead of our adverbial sentences, consider these instead: The boy dashed up the hill. The boy sprinted up the hill. The boy clambered up the hill. The boy toddled up the hill.
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In each case, we’ve used a more precise verb than what we started with, and in so doing, we’ve added (perhaps only a little) additional information to the sentence. These sentences may not yet be great, or even good. The point is they are better.
 
Anytime you can get more meaning into a sentence with fewer words, you’re on the right track. More meaning with fewer words means prose that is propulsive, driving, active, and interesting.
 
“Sprinting” up a hill requires a level of coordination that may not be conveyed by mere “running.” We would not expect a young toddler to be able to “sprint.” Hence my use of “sprinting” tends to convey that the generic subject “boy” is at least not a toddler. If we say he “dashed” up the hill, we may convey that he is going for purpose, or to some end, since “dash” implies a direction of purpose that “run” may not convey. If we say he “hurried” up the hill, we are almost certainly conveying that he is attending to some urgent matter on the other end as opposed to, say, a pleasant jog. Note that a more precise subject would also help, but we'll deal with that another day. For now, the lesson here is that the more precise our verb is, the more information our sentence can carry.
 
The magic, the juice, the real meaning and intent of an English-language sentence is almost always carried in the VERB. It is therefore far preferable to spend a moment’s thought and choose the most precise verb you can rather than take the lazy way out and add an additional word.
 
Another consideration: adverbs, very often, do not even convey the additional meaning that the lesser writer believes they do. Consider the sentence: “Whether that ploy was widely successful was apparently never documented.” Now remove the two adverbs “widely” and “apparently” and ask yourself whether the meaning has been changed: “Whether that ploy was successful was never documented.” In this case, I would argue that the meaning and the readability have both been sharpened, at least a little, by the removal of the adverbs.
 
Another example: “My meetings with the boss were always regularly scheduled.” The adverb “regularly” is meant to convey the ongoing and perfunctory nature of the scheduled meetings. But is the sentence not sharper without it? “My meetings with the boss were always scheduled.” The significance of the sentence lands harder without the adverb. Another example: “The Manor residents were basically considered squatters.” “Basically” doesn’t help here, and in fact detracts from the meaning. The sentence works better without it: “The Manor residents were considered squatters.” (This sentence has its own problems, i.e., it is a passive sentence, which we’ll also discuss later.)
 
Does something need to be “quickly sparked”? Does not spark, as in an idea or a romance, used as a metaphor already denote a sudden and rapid in-flaming? The adverb adds nothing to the phrase.
 
Here is another example: “To maintain cover on his front, Smith ordered his command to align in a single rank--actually the first and only time in the war that Johnson’s entire brigade would be deployed as such.” The adverb has added nothing, has it? The sentence reads better without it: “To maintain cover on his front, Smith ordered his command to align in a single rank—the first and only time in the war that Johnson’s entire brigade would be deployed as such.”
 
It may even be worse, however. Consider how often an adverb detracts from the meaning of a sentence. “I told her that, basically, I love her.” Anyone to whom that sentence is uttered would likely conclude that there is no love there at all. (Indeed, as I just demonstrated in the last sentence, one good use case for adverbs is when you WANT to lessen or obviate the verb: “likely conclude” is less certain than “conclude.”)
 
I know of no editor who would insist that events and actions can never happen traditionally, or persistently, or good-naturedly, or laughingly. But I would press the case that before one accepts an adverb in a sentence and moves on, one should be certain that there isn’t a more precise verb that could fit the bill, or that you truly do want to lessen or mitigate the impact of a precisely-chosen verb.
 
So what do we think, dear readers? Are there cases where adverbs are absolutely, positively, and undeniably essential?
 
—David J. Snyder