How To Improve Your Use Of Adjectives And Adverbs
Do you encounter problems with the use of adjectives and adverbs? While they’re not the easiest to master (I’ve seen pros use them poorly), paying careful attention at how you use them can do wonders (especially during the editing stages).
A few quick tips to remember:
1. Any time that an adverb plus a verb can be replaced by a single verb without losing the essence of the idea, then do it.
2. Beware of relying on overused modifiers (e.g. “very,” “pretty,” “slightly,” “little,” etc.) as they tend to make text more cumbersome to read. In fact, I recommend adding those words to your grammar checking software to alert you whenever you use them.
3. If an adjective is redundant (meaning, the reader already knows it based on the noun alone), then remove it. Want an example? Try “good-looking beauty pageant contestants” – they’re in a beauty pageant, so they should be, by definition, good-looking all on their own.
If you find yourself using adjectives and adverbs just a little too much, this exercise done over several sessions should help straighten you out:
1. Choose a subject – any subject – to write about.
2. Resolve to write five paragraphs. The second and fourth paragraphs will have no modifiers whatsoever.
3. When tempted to insert a modifier as you write the second and fourth paragraphs, focus your attention on finding a suitable verb or noun that can replace it instead.
That’s it – an exercise in writing without using any modifiers. I suggest you save materials you wrote this way and review them at a later time. Compare the paragraphs with modifiers to the ones without and see which one is better. Modifiers aren’ bad. Most of the time, though, your sentences can do without them.