Castle Walls Editing

Tag: adverb

  • Going to the Well Once Too Often

    One guy sits at the bar in his favorite watering hole. Another guy sits down next to him. After a brief exchange, it’s established that the second guy is from out of town. The first guy asks after the football team in the second guy’s home city.

    The second guy says, “They’re looking really well this year,” and he lingers just enough on the word well to reveal a hint of pride at his word choice.

    “That’s good,” says the first guy. “I’m glad they’re not ill.”

    And then a Boy Scout, a bear, and the president enter the bar, prompting the bartender to ask, “What is this, some kind of joke?”

    * * *

    In the same way that people are deathly afraid of saying “you and me” in any context, whether it’s grammatically correct or not (“You and I!” your first-grade teacher scolds), people are also afraid of using good incorrectly. Unfortunately, this leads to them always replacing it with well, which of course renders them susceptible to looking foolish.

    Good is an adjective. Well is an adverb. Simple enough.

    Adjectives come before nouns. Adverbs hover around verbs. Got it.

    Unfortunately, there is the sad case of the predicate adjective, often following “to be” verbs. Saying “He is good” indicates that someone is in high spirits or is generally in a satisfactory place in life. Saying “He is well” would indicate that the person is not sick. The confusion arises from a fear of using the adjective when the adverb is called for. Someone saying “He hits the ball good” would have made this mistake.

    In addition to “to be” verbs, there are reflexive verbs such as “looking” that can also take predicate adjectives, because the action of the verb refers back to the subject: “The Bashers look good this year.”

    Just between you and me, I’ve had my fill of wells this week.

  • I Come to Bury Verbs, Not to Praise Them

    Mourners of the soon-to-be-buried verb looked on as the coffin descended into the open grave. The question mark hunched over in grief. The exclamation point stood bolt upright, its posture a salute to its good friend’s passing. Three periods stood side by side, a single space between them. They looked off into the distance, elliptical expressions only hinting at the emotions roiling within.

    As a pair of quotation marks prepared to say something profound, a single, overriding concern passed among the congregants: Why, cruel Fate? Why?

    Every day, all across the land, people are burying verbs. The practice undoubtedly seems like something that happens elsewhere, something that happens to other people, in other neighborhoods. The truth, however, is that it occurs closer to home than most would care to think.

    A buried verb, also referred to as a smothered verb or nominalization, results when a verb is hidden within a noun phrase. If a person says “She made an agreement” instead of “She agreed,” then that person has buried the verb.

    The following are a few other examples of buried verbs:

    • take a look (instead of “look”)
    • make a recommendation (instead of “recommend”)
    • make the argument (instead of “argue”)

    One consequence of using buried verbs is that the writer is unnecessarily adding words. Another is that the writer is obscuring meaning. By their nature, nouns are less active than verbs, so employing a noun to do the heavy lifting for a sentence deadens the language.

    The verb is the engine that makes the sentence run, and people can always improve their writing by using stronger verbs. For the same reason, as Stephen King recommended in his fantastic book On Writing, people should not use adverbs to cover up weak verbs.

    This does not mean that people should never use buried verbs or adverbs, but a careful writer is aware of their potentially adverse effect on a sentence. When editing your work, these are two more things to keep your eye on. And honestly, considering the doleful expressions in the scene above, burying a verb may not be worth the guilt that is sure to follow.

    Note: In the first paragraph, I used the phrase “side by side.” This phrase is not hyphenated when used as an adverb, as above, but it is hyphenated when used as an adjective (“side-by-side periods”). A similar expression, “face-to-face,” is hyphenated as both an adverb and an adjective. No wonder people have such a difficult time with hyphenation!