Adverbs – High School Equivalency

Using specific adverbs can make your writing clearer and more interesting. Which sentence below gives you the clearest picture?

Nina skated.

Nina skated well.

Nina skated quickly and gracefully.

Examples: An adverb tells how, where, when, or how many times an action takes place.

She hung posters quickly. (tells how)

She hung posters everywhere. (tells where)

She hung posters yesterday. (tells when)

She hung posters twice. (tells how many times)

These adverbs tell to what degree, or how much something is true.

That is a very powerful car. (Very tells how powerful the car is.)

The car is too expensive for me. (Too tells how expensive the car is.)

The engine is rather unsafe. (Rather tells how unsafe the engine is.)

These adverbs also tell to what degree, or how much something is true.

The manager spoke fairly briefly. (Fairly tells how briefly.)

He hit the ball especially hard. (Especially tells how hard.)

Ted played rather well. (Rather tells how well.)

Examples of adverbs that tell more about adjectives and adverbs
almost	quite	too
especially	rather	truly
extremely	really	unusually
fairly	somewhat	very

His voice was loud. (The adjective loud tells more about the noun voice.)

He spoke loudly. (The adverb loudly tells more about the verb spoke.)

Roger has a good car. (The adjective good tells more about the noun car.)

He drives it well. (The adverb well tells more about the verb drives.)

Some negative words are adverbs. Not is an adverb – it is not part of the verb.

Do not use more than one negative word in a sentence.

Incorrect: Bob didn’t do nothing.

Correct: Bob didn’t do anything.

Correct: Bob did nothing.