Adverbs: when they help and when a stronger verb is better
Adverbs are not the enemy. Many carry facts you need. The ones worth cutting prop up a weak verb or repeat what the verb already says.
Advice to cut adverbs is everywhere, and it is half right. Some adverbs do essential work: they tell you when, where, how often, or to what degree, and no verb can do that for them. Others exist only because the verb next to them is too weak to carry the meaning alone. Learning to tell the two apart is more useful than any blanket rule.
What an adverb does
An adverb modifies a verb, an adjective, another adverb, or a whole clause. It answers questions like these:
- How? She answered carefully.
- When? The package arrives tomorrow.
- Where? Put the box upstairs.
- How often? He rarely calls.
- To what degree? The water is almost boiling.
Many adverbs end in -ly, but many do not: soon, often, never, here, very, well, still. And, as the next section shows, many -ly words are not adverbs at all.
Adverbs that earn their place
An adverb earns its place when it adds information the reader cannot get from the other words.
- Take one tablet daily. (Frequency. Essential.)
- The bridge is temporarily closed. (Without it, the reader thinks the closure is permanent.)
- Revenue rose slightly. (The size of the change is the news.)
- The tests were not conclusive. (Try cutting “not”.)
Words of time, place, frequency, and negation almost always stay. So do adverbs that change the meaning of the sentence, like only, almost, and never. If you remove one and the sentence now says something different, the adverb was doing its job.
Adverbs that prop up a weak verb
The adverbs worth cutting usually sit next to a general verb, adding the color the verb lacks. English often has a single verb that does both jobs.
| Verb + adverb | Stronger verb |
|---|---|
| walked slowly | strolled, ambled, trudged |
| said quietly | whispered, murmured |
| ate quickly | gulped, wolfed |
| looked closely | examined, studied, inspected |
| ran quickly | sprinted, raced |
| closed firmly | shut, slammed |
Each stronger verb carries a slightly different shade of meaning. “Strolled” is relaxed; “trudged” is tired. Choosing between them forces you to decide what you actually mean, which is the real benefit.
Before: He walked slowly and heavily up the stairs and closed the door loudly behind him.
After: He trudged up the stairs and slammed the door.
Adverbs that repeat the verb
Some adverbs say what the verb already said. These are pure redundancy.
- whispered quietly (whispering is quiet)
- shouted loudly
- sprinted quickly
- completely finished, totally destroyed
- smiled happily
Before: She whispered quietly that the project had been completely finished.
After: She whispered that the project was finished.
Dialogue tags in fiction are a common home for these: “she said angrily”, “he replied sadly”. Often the dialogue itself, or an action, can show the emotion. That is a matter of craft and taste, not a rule; an occasional adverb in a dialogue tag is fine.
Intensifiers: very, really, extremely
Intensifiers are adverbs of degree that are meant to strengthen. In practice, they often weaken. “Very important” sounds less important than “critical” or “essential”, because the reader sees a writer reaching for emphasis.
| With intensifier | Precise word |
|---|---|
| very tired | exhausted |
| very big | huge, vast |
| really good | excellent |
| very scared | terrified |
| extremely difficult | grueling |
| very important | essential, critical |
Before: The results were really very disappointing, and the team was extremely upset.
After: The results were dismal, and the team was dejected.
Sometimes there is no single precise word, and an intensifier is the clearest option. “The water is very cold” is plain and honest. The goal is not to ban “very” but to notice when it is doing the work a better word should do. See hedges and weasel words for more on intensifiers, and the hedge words list for a longer inventory.
-ly words that are not adverbs
If you search a draft for “ly”, you will find plenty of words that are not adverbs. Leave these alone:
- Adjectives: friendly, lonely, lovely, likely, costly, early, daily (as in “a daily report”), elderly, silly, ugly
- Nouns: family, supply, reply, rally, ally, jelly, assembly, butterfly
- Verbs: apply, rely, fly, comply, imply
“Friendly” in “a friendly dog” is an adjective; nothing about the dog’s friendliness modifies a verb. A few words, like daily, early, and only, can be either an adjective or an adverb depending on the sentence.
This is why mechanical “-ly” counts are a rough measure. A tool can point to candidates, but you have to judge each one.
Sentence adverbs
Some adverbs modify a whole sentence rather than a single word: fortunately, clearly, obviously, frankly, honestly, hopefully.
Use these with care. Clearly and obviously tell the reader that something is evident, which can feel condescending if it is not evident to them. Frankly and honestly can imply that everything else you wrote was less than frank.
Before: Obviously, the new design is clearly better than the old one in every way.
After: The new design loads faster and needs fewer clicks.
The After version replaces assertion with evidence. That is usually the better trade.
A practical approach
- Find the adverbs. Read slowly, or use the word counter to see total length before and after.
- Keep adverbs of time, place, frequency, degree, and negation unless they are redundant.
- For each adverb of manner, ask whether a single verb could do the work.
- Delete adverbs that repeat the verb.
- Replace intensifiers with precise words where one exists.
The result should not be adverb-free. It should be a draft where every adverb is there because it says something.
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