Adverbs: Avoiding adverb overuse

Adverbs are quite a varied class of words, which work in several different ways in sentences. Think of examples like obviously, afterwards, extremelygently. These show that adverbs can express many different kinds of meaning.

This makes adverbs a useful word class. However, many experienced writers advise us to avoid overusing adverbs, and instead find other ways of describing actions and events.

Warnings about adverb overuse usually concern manner adverbs. This type of adverb modifies a verb and describes how (or in what ‘manner’) something happens. In this way it tells us more about the action or process described by the verb. Here are some examples of manner adverbs:

A common writing problem is to rely too heavily on manner adverbs to describe the action in a story. The following passage is an example. Pause here for a moment and see if you can find all the manner adverbs:

Here is the same passage with the manner adverbs marked:

You probably noticed that all these adverbs ending in -ly sound clumsy when they occur close together. They seem to clog up the writing and stop it from flowing. They also fail to provide a vivid description of the action.

For example, this passage tells us that Josh came quickly into the room, combining an adverb with the verb came, which conveys a rather bland meaning.

Instead, a stronger verb could be used on its own to create a more vivid image of Josh’s action: for instance, we could write that he strode or stalked or stomped into the room.

Similarly, instead of The door opened suddenly we could have The door burst open. Then we might have:

The passage also tells us that Fiona was chatting flirtatiously, but this does not give us a clear image. It would be better to describe what she was actually doing:

Similar points apply to the use of angrily and aggressively.

Experienced writers advise us to ‘show rather than tell’ the reader what is happening.

Welcome!

Englicious is totally free for everyone to use!

But in exchange, we ask that you register for an account on our site.

If you’ve already registered, you can log in straight away.

Since this is your first visit today, you can see this page by clicking the button below.

CLOSE