Proofreading Service - Pain in the English
Proofreading Service - Pain in the English

Your Pain Is Our Pleasure

24-Hour Proofreading Service—We proofread your Google Docs or Microsoft Word files. We hate grammatical errors with a passion. Learn More

Proofreading Service - Pain in the English
Proofreading Service - Pain in the English

Your Pain Is Our Pleasure

24-Hour Proofreading Service—We proofread your Google Docs or Microsoft Word files. We hate grammatical errors with a passion. Learn More

Username

Will I Am

Member Since

August 21, 2013

Total number of comments

1

Total number of votes received

1

Bio

Latest Comments

Adverbs better avoided?

  • August 21, 2013, 2:38pm

This is something I had struggled with when joining an online critt community. My work was inundated with all sorts of structural errors, yet the most commonLY called out one was overuse of adverbs. I had another writer who tried to eliminate all passive usage from my work.

In the end, I took what I learned and exceeded expectations of what my work could be. It is still in process, but it reads incredibLY sharp now and more like the bestselling fiction we all aspire to write someday.

And there are still adverbs in the work, though near not as many. What did minimizing adverb usage do for me? It made the work sharper, cleaner and overall a much, MUCH better read. So minimizing these issues, rather than trying to hammer them out completeLY, can benefit a work greatLY. Like Thredder above said-everything in moderation.

But the important thing is to understand WHY a word works or doesn't in any given circumstance. If you minimize certain structural elements just because someone said so, and have no real understanding of why it does or doesn't work here or there...the only thing you're going to accomplish is making your bad writing look LESS bad. It still doesn't solve the real problem...your evolution as a professional writer.