Copy needs to be clear, precise and readable. I’ve talked about tactics for clear writing before, like choosing Anglo-Saxon words over Latinate ones, and keeping your sentences active. Today I’m going to talk about the copywriter’s archenemy: the adverb.

An adverb gives us more information about the verb it operates on. (A verb, you may recall, is a word for an action, be it physical, emotional or intellectual: eat, love, think.) In the sentence “Dave ran quickly”, “quickly” is an adverb because it tells us how Dave is running. Some adverbs are unavoidable. In the sentence “I was eating my lunch with a fork” the “..with a fork” is adverbial, but we have to use it because otherwise the full meaning of the sentence would be lost.

The adverbs you need to watch out for are the ones that end “-ly”, like “quickly” in the example above. They’re bad because they’re often superfluous and they clutter up sentences, making the reader’s job harder. If you’re a copywriter, you want to make your reader’s job as easy as you can, because if he finds your copy gummed up with unnecessary words he’ll lose interest in you and in your product. “Dave ran quickly” is only a short sentence, but it’s flabby, lazy writing. “Dave sprinted” or “Dave dashed” would be better. In each case the verbs (“sprinted” and “dashed”) are stronger and more descriptive, and the sentence, although it was short to begin with, has lost a word it didn’t really need.

Every time you find an “-ly” adverb, ask yourself if you can cut it by making the associated verb stronger. Sometimes it won’t be possible. You should also target meaningless adverbial intensifiers: totally, completely, awesomely and all that gang of stylistic thugs should be put up against the wall and shot during your editing.

I’m not writing rules here. You’ll find that “-ly” adverbs creep into your writing, and, unless you’re putting together something very important, it won’t be worth the bother of scrutinising them all. Remember, too, that not all words ending “-ly” are adverbs. If you grumble to a friend,

“Really! Why is it only me that has to read The Da Vinci Code? It’s such a badly-written novel.”

- you haven’t used a single adverb. (“Badly-written” is an adjective.)

On very rare occasions you’ll find that adverbs can improve your writing:

To boldly go where no man has gone before.

Would Star Trek have been such a hit if Captain Kirk had “ventured” or “explored”? Grammar geeks love that sentence because it also contains a split infinitive. That’s something we’ll explore deeply, in a really meaningful way, thinking carefully about all its implications… another day.