Why trim adverbs
Stephen King famously wrote that “the road to hell is paved with adverbs.” The point isn’t that adverbs are forbidden (it’s that they often prop up a weak verb or adjective). “She walked slowly” is fine; “she shuffled” or “she ambled” shows more. “Very tired” becomes “exhausted”.
What gets highlighted
- -ly adverbs: words of at least five letters ending in -ly. A list of over a hundred exceptions prevents false alarms on adjectives and nouns like family, only, early, friendly, lovely, supply, reply, July and Italy.
- Intensifiers (optional): very, really, extremely, totally, absolutely, incredibly… These rarely add force; usually the sentence is stronger without them.
Proper nouns and capitalised words are never flagged.
Editing tips
- Delete the adverb and reread. If the meaning holds, leave it out.
- If it doesn’t, look for a precise verb: “said loudly” → “shouted”, “ran quickly” → “raced”.
- Keep adverbs that change meaning (“barely passed”, “partly true”), they do real work.
Worked example
Here is what the Adverb Finder returns for its built-in example. Settings used: Include intensifiers (very, really…): on. Click Try an example in the tool above to load it, then change it as you like.
In order to succeed, the report was written by the team in a timely manner. It is important to note that the results were very, very good.
Basically, at the end of the day, we really need to think outside the box and leverage our synergy. Their is a lot of work to do, and the the deadline is close.
The chairman said that you guys should of known better. Its a fact that the data was analysed carefully and the color of the charts was chosen for clarity.| Found | Type | Suggestion |
|---|---|---|
| “very” | Intensifier | remove |
| “very” | Intensifier | remove |
| “Basically” | -ly adverb | — |
| “really” | -ly adverb | — |
| “carefully” | -ly adverb | — |
Questions
Are all words ending in -ly adverbs?
No. Words like family, friendly, lovely, early, only and supply end in -ly but are nouns, adjectives or verbs. They are excluded from the results.
How many adverbs is too many?
There is no fixed rule. A common editing target is one -ly adverb per 100 words or fewer in narrative and persuasive writing.
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