Aspiring science-fiction authors receive one piece of advice above all others: Forsake the adverb, the killer of prose. It’s terribly, awfully, horrendously important. But why? Really, adverbs aren’t ...

“Many older adults said they feel positively about their lives,” the New York Times reported recently. That sentence probably sounds as acceptable to you as it did to the Times editors. But what if ...

Count the adverbs in the following sentence. Therefore, we should wait outside awhile because the very lovely and kindly family will be there soon to tell us fast whether everyone is well. Would it ...

… but our independent journalism isn’t free to produce. Help us keep it this way with a tax-deductible donation today. Marlon James, the Jamaican-born Macalester College English professor who last ...

So how do we produce readable and clean scientific writing? One of the good elements of style is to avoid adverbs and adjectives (Zinsser 2006). Adjectives and adverbs sprinkle paper with unnecessary ...

If, somewhere out there in Grammarland, adverbs have their own post office, I’m sure my picture is hanging in it, probably above the caption “Public Enemy No. 1” or “Wanted Dead or Alive.” I don’t ...