The Guardian

Don't ditch the adverb, the emoji of writing | Gary Nunn

The adverb gets people fired up, and the chorus calling for a ban is getting too loud to ignore
‘Stephen King leads the charge for the abolition. “The road to hell is paved with adverbs,” he writes in 2000’s On Writing’ Photograph: Mark Lennihan/AP

Should we brazenly ditch the adverb? For those who spotted the nerdy linguistic pun in that question, my bias may be already abundantly clear.

But maybe I’m wrong. Plenty of writers offer lexical advice - both solicited and not. The adverb gets people weirdly fired up; many are less fond of it than me. I spent recent months devouring writing about writing as I complete the first draft of my first novel, so the recurring themes are fresh in my sun-kissed skull.

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