Adjectives should be rationed and adverbs questioned. When the Covid-19 was raging through the world, there was a poster: Is your journey really necessary? Let’s replace the word “journey” with another noun “adjective” and see what happens. Is an adjective really necessary in your sentence to define the subject? Is it adding any potency to your thought? Most of the time adjectives and adverbs boil down the strength of a verb and a noun. Yet, often, they are a necessity.
Journalist Harold Evans writes: “I don’t think twice about getting rid of adverbs hitching a ride on a verb to tell us what we already infer: brides coming very happily from weddings, the thieves running speedily, children lagging wearily, fists shaken angrily, burgers eaten hungrily. These low-information adverbs of manners ending in “ly” don’t enhance. They enfeeble.”
Stephen King wrote: “I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs.” He was right.
There was a sentence in a national daily in India: The government has miserably failed. “Fail” is a powerful verb elbowed aside by the adverb “miserably.”
Seductive adjectives
Adjectives are no less seductive than adverbs. A few young writers have the tendency to use colourful adjectives. They think such words excite the reader. Genesis does not begin with an adjective the dramatic story of how God created the world in six days.
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. The spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” There is an element of drama, but no adjective or adverb.
Let’s see how the wimpy adjectives humiliated a strong verb in a sports report.
“Magnificent, out of the world, their glowing skills and unflinching bravery, this man of magic blew apart the defence of the rival team.” These adjectives have no business to butt in on the verb “blew apart.”
If there is something sensational or amusing, the writers should describe the incident that itself will amuse or shock the reader.
Reducing fat strengthens a sentence down with bloat. Herbert Spencer writes: Test of style is economy of the reader’s attention. Ergo, if there are darlings – called adjectives and adverbs – slay them. As far as abating fat in a sentence goes, George Orwell was crueller than other writers. He says, “If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.” But one should be careful not to strike out a word that supports a structure to make every word tell.
