Are adverbs dead?

[Left Is Write]

Do people not use adverbs anymore?

Heard on a commercial yesterday: "You can cook the food quicker."

Heard on a newsmagazine show yesterday: "It helps people look closer."

Heard on ABC news moments ago: "Delta won't go down easy."


I expect people who write ad copy and news stories to know and use adverbs! What's going on here?

[Fuzz]

1. One of my pet peeves!!

[blondeatlast]

2. It drives me absoluteLY nuts!

Yes, I've noticed it a lot and it makes me crazy. My 9 year old son speaks better than a lot of adults I know.

[Hugin]

3. It's a trend.

It's a fad.

It'll pass. (I hope)

[QuestionAll...]

26. it's big pharma... no herbs or verbs allowed.

If it doesn't get a few guys big yachts, it's unconscituatinalyallity.

[deucemagnet]

4. Absolutely. Totally. Completely. n/t

[blondeatlast]

5. Very, too. nt

[Lautremont]

6. Maybe Lolly closed up shop.

(Mmm...Mmm...Mmm)
Ready Pop? Yup.
Ready son? Uh-huh.
Let's go!
Let's go!
One! Two!...

Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, get your adverbs here.
Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, got some adverbs here.
Come on down to Lolly's, get the
adverbs here
You're going to need
If you write or read,
Or even think about it.

Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, get you're adverbs here.
Got a lot of lolly, jolly adverbs here.
Anything you need and we can make it absolutely clear...

An adverb is a word
(That's all it is! And there's a lot of them)
That modifies a verb,
(Sometimes a verb and sometimes)
It modifies an adjective, or else another adverb
And so you see that it's positively, very, very necessary.

Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, get your adverbs here.
Father, son, and Lolly selling adverbs here.
Got a lot of adverbs, and we make it clear,
So come to Lolly! (Lolly, Lolly, Lolly)

Hello folks, this is Lolly, Sr., saying we have every adverb in the
book, so come on down and look.

Hello folks, Lolly, Jr., here. Suppose your house needs painting -
how are you going to paint it? That's where the adverb comes
in. We can also give you a special intensifier so you can paint it
very neatly or rather sloppily.

Hi! Suppose you're go8ing nut gathering; your buddy wants to
know where and when. Use an adverb and tell him!

Get your adverbs!

Use it with an adjective, it says much more,
Anything described can be described some more.
Anything you'd ever need is in the store,
And so you choose very carefully every word you use.

Use it with a verb, it tells us how you did,
Where it happened, where you're going, where you've been.
Use it with another adverb - that's the end,
And even more...

How, where, or when,
Condition or reason,
These questions are answered
When you use an adverb.

Come and get it!

Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, get your adverbs here.
Quickly, quickly, quickly, get those adverbs here.
Slowly, surely, really learn your adverbs here.
You're going to need 'em if you read 'em,
If you write or talk or think about 'em...Lolly! (Lolly, Lolly, Lolly)

Announcer: If it's an adverb, we have it at Lolly's. Bring along your old adjectives,
too - like slow, soft, and sure. We'll fit 'em out with our L - Y
attachment and make perfectly good adverbs out of them!

(Get your adverbs here!)

Lots of good tricks at Lolly's so come on down.

(Lolly, Lolly, Lolly)

Adverbs deal with manner, place, time,
(Lolly, Lolly, Lolly)
Condition, reason,
(Father, son, and Lolly)
Comparison, contrast
(Lolly, Lolly, Lolly)
Enrich your language with adverbs!
(Lolly, Lolly, Lolly)
Besides they're absolutely free!
(Lolly, Lolly, Lolly)
At your service.

Indubitably.

Edited to add: this is taken straight from the Schoolhouse Rocks website, but check out the bad grammar! Specifically the first chorus: "Get you're adverbs here!" My gosh. If we can't trust Schoolhouse Rocks for grammar, what has the world come to?

[Proud MD Liberal]

20. Just another example of the big guy

Pushing the little guy out. See what happens when the big box store arrives in town. :-)

[crim son]

7. Not dead but dying. Fast. :)

[pitohui]

8. they are considered bad writing

one of the prime directives of the 20th century: when proof-reading your prose remove all of the adverbs, i got this advice when writing for a magazine in the 1980s and it went back much earlier, clean prose simply doesn't contain adverbs, they are almost always filler

supposedly mark twain first suggested it, although this may be apocryphal -- i suspect the idea really goes back to publications that paid by the word

there are all the adverbs you could ever want used in "infinite jest" by david foster wallace but, for the most part, the adverb has very little place in modern communication, it's just additional noise

on edit -- go back and remove all the "y" and "ly" words from my post, do you really lose any of the information?

[CaliforniaPeggy]

13. I think you have an excellent point here...but...

Instead of removing the adverbs from our OP's examples, folks are substituting words that are not grammatical at all...

That substitution is flat-out wrong and ugly to boot...

IMHO, of course!

[Left Is Write]

14. Why are misused adjectives clean but adverbs are not?

I can see an argument against qualifiers (I wouldn't agree with it, but I can understand the argument), but not an argument against adverbs that leaves adjectives alone.

[pitohui]

27. adjectives are bad too EOM

.

[Left Is Write]

38. You just used one.

[Ptah]

15. I removed the words ending in "y" and a couple of other adverbs from your post.

"one of the prime directives of the 20th century: when proof-reading your prose remove all of the adverbs, i got this advice when writing for a magazine in the 1980s and it went back much earlier, clean prose doesn't contain adverbs, filler

mark twain first suggested it, although this be apocryphal -- i suspect the idea goes back to publications that paid the word

there are all the adverbs you could ever want used in "infinite jest" david foster wallace but, for the most part, the adverb has little place in modern communication, it's just additional noise

on edit -- go back and remove all the "y" and "ly" words from post, do you lose of the information?"


It's different.

:shrug:

[Mythsaje]

19. I was wondering why my editor wanted me to eliminate my adverbs...

Adjectives are fine, but adverbs apparently suck.

[Rabrrrrrr]

30. I think you mean "adverbs are apparently suckly".

:rofl:

[Monk06]

31. You are indeedly, doodley correct. I myself am an extreme, friend guy.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

9. Not for me.

And I teach my kid to use them, too.

[pitohui]

28. do you publish a national magazine? EOM

.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

33. Sorry...I can't help you there.

:beer:

[struggle4progress]

10. Some folks real need get a life. Nobody take adverb serious.

[Karenina]

17. ly

[Oeditpus Rex]

11. Apparently

[greatauntoftriplets]

12. I use them extremly regularly....

and I write, professionally. Though not ad copy, thank the gods.

;)

[Redstone]

16. Apparently so.

Redstone

[LynzM]

18. Apparently.

:rofl:

Seriously, though, poor grammar like that drives me crazy. I used to copy-edit, and now it's a function that I can't turn off in my brain. Never-ending grammar check. :eyes:

[VeggieTart]

21. I am a grammar snob

And stop using "real" as an adverb! It's REALLY annoying.

Lynne Truss, please pick up the white courtesy phone. You're needed here.

[LynzM]

23. LOL

:rofl: Sorry mom, I won't do it again!!

[Drum]

22. Evidently.

Ad-wise, I'd point to the crucial cutting involved, in cramming their messages into the short time of a commercial...I swear, a good % of the time they'd rather conserve syllables and punch up speech cadence than to write accurately or correctly (and let's not even dream of *beautifully, poetically, or artistically*.) Sadly, they measure time in micro-seconds, and brevity and punch trumps the rest in most cases, depending on the product of course. Cmmercials will continue to provide some wondrous and wonderful examples of art-meets-commerce, but in many more cases are badly done.

Still, it is healthy for us to distinguish the difference...it has ever been so.

:shrug:ing good-naturedly,
Drum

[Left Is Write]

39. I wrote and voiced commercials for years when I was in radio.

The idea of replacing adverbs with adjectives for time reasons never came up, and I had to cut a lot of copy over the years.

The commercial I referenced in the OP was a 30-minute infomercial. If they had time to wax orgasmic over the taste of the food, I'm sure they had time to say "more quickly."

[Drum]

40. Then I'm stumped.

Perhaps dumbing-down our national language (or "shooting for the middle," "lowest common denominator") is the real reason.
:shrug:

[mykpart]

24. Evidently people rarely use them

currently, but perhaps one day we will again use them liberally and abundantly. Frankly, I think the use of adverbs is the difference between beautiful prose and simply technical writing.

[rug]

25. I think gerunds are more endangered.

[graywarrior]

29. Try going to a macrobiotic lecture. They all talk like Michio.

"Michio drink twig tea." "Michio approve." "Eat dairy, grow tumor, uh?" "Pressure cook give strength." "Erect altar to Michio, yes?"

[evlbstrd]

34. Who or what the hell is Michio?

I've heard of miso.

[graywarrior]

36. Michio Kushi, the Big Daddy of the Macrobiotic Community

He hears all, sees all, cures all.

[evlbstrd]

43. Once again,

I'm just not hip to what the cool kids are into these days.

[Hubert H. Hubert]

32. Hardly. n/t

[TheBaldyMan]

35. Verily n/t

[MissMillie]

37. "kills pain fast"

"drive safe"

How did anyone ever pass high school English?

[Deep13]

41. Let's head out to Lolly's to stock up.

http://www.school-house-rock.com/Adv.html

[youthere]

44. Gotcher' adverbs right here:

[Chiyo-chichi]

42. They died quickly, mysteriously, and courageously.

The fought bravely.