Adverbs Necessary? Not Always!

Often, beginning writers overuse adverbs, especially when writing dialogue. They may write, "She whispered quietly." But, how else can someone whisper but "quietly"? In this case, the adverb is redundant (unnecessary) and so it should be removed.

Erick Emert in his article, The Ardeon Writer's Exercise List: Those "ly" Ending Adverbs, has gathered together discussions on the overuse of adverbs from a number of sources. Read the whole page! One of the better pieces of advice is to use your word processor and "type in 'ly,' hit 'find,' and rewrite any sentence that contains an "ly" ending word in it." Try it yourself to see how often you are using "ly" adverbs in your prose.

 

 

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