Are adverbs the enemy?

[Greybeard]

I was perusing a writing journal, and there was an article declaring war against adverbs. It called them "the enemy of clear writing," and advocated their ruthless removal.

Are they truly that bad?

 

[At Dusk I Reign]

There's a book waiting to be written: Adverbs, the Enemy of Mankind.

Personally, I can't see a problem as long as they're used in moderation and express what the author is trying to convey. Of course overloading a sentence with them is going to lead to irritation on the part of the reader, but the converse is also true: there are some crime writers who seem to think a pared-to-the-bone approach lends their work literary merit. It doesn't. As in all things, moderation is the key.

 

[Vita Numinous]

I think that adverbs have gotten a bad rep because people can use them to be lazy, and often use too many of them. Do you want your character to "shyly" talk to her new boss, or do you perhaps wish to describe the symptoms of her shyness to really bring the reader into the moment and that character?

"I wanted to talk to you about that raise," Linda asked shyly.

Linda couldn't seem to bring herself to look into her boss' eyes, but she forced herself to speak.
"I wanted to talk to you about that raise," she said, crumpling her file folder, letters, and the day's memos all to her chest in an untidy jumble.

My example is probably crappy, but you get the idea. Yes, I think that a quick check of "do I really need that adverb" is good, because you can bring a scene to life by noticing where you cheated with an adverb, show don't tell and all that, but I don't think that means you should never ever ever touch one. Moderation, common sense, and craft.

 

[Ravana]

The problem isn't that they're the enemy, it's that they're overused, particularly by inexperienced writers and especially by ones more interested in increasing word count than in telling the story better. That last may seem to run counter to Vita's example—where one word was replaced by thirty-five—but consider that, first of all, you get a much clearer picture of what's going on; second, that you get a much clearer picture of the character's actual emotional state, and thus of the sorts of things she might do in similar situations, possibly even in dissimilar ones; and third, the word count could still be increased superfluously by employing multiple instances of "very," "really," and so on, not to mention adjectives describing the color of the folders, paper sizes and lengths of the letters, etc. In general, unless the adverb you're using is specific, there's probably a more specific verb you could use in its place: "he ran very quickly" (ugh) vs. "he raced"—and never "he raced quickly," unless there are times he races slowly: that's just redundant. (By comparison, consider what I might have said in place of "increased superfluously" above: that—I hope, at least—might be considered a "good" usage. )

So adverbs may be the enemy of good writing in the sense that they are too often used lazily and with imprecision: they can be as bad as trying to generate excitement through using exclamation points every third sentence—that is, counterproductive. However, they are part of the language, and are as "legitimate" as any other words you might use. And as with any other word you might use, if you don't need it, dump it.