Most adverbs are unnecessary. You will clutter your sentence and annoy the reader if you choose a verb that has a specific meaning and then add an adverb that carries the same meaning.
No one likes feeling useless, but adverbs might justifiably feel that way. Adverbs find themselves much maligned because they’re often redundant or awkwardly placed.When they are good they are incredibly useful.
在On Wrting中, Stephen King 说 : The adverb is not your friend. Adverbs, like the passive voice, seem to have been created with the the timid writer in mind.
The Elements of Style 中说: Adverbs are easy to build. Take an adjective or a participle, add -ly, and behold! you have an adverb. But you’d probably be better off without it.
Don’t tell us that the radio blared loudly; “blare” connotes loudness. Don’t write that someone clenched his teeth tightly; there’s no other way to clench teeth. Again and again in careless writing, strong verbs are weakened by redundant adverbs. So are adjectives and other parts of speech: “effortlessly easy,” “slightly spartan,” “totally flabbergasted.” The beauty of “flabbergasted” is that it implies an astonishment that is total; I can’t picture someone being partly flabbergasted. If an action is so easy as to be effortless, use “effortless.” And what is “slightly spartan”? Perhaps a monk’s cell with wall-to-wall carpeting. Don’t use adverbs unless they do necessary work. Spare us the news that the winning athlete grinned widely.
以上提到的这些副词的使用过于重复和多余(repetitive and redundant)，从而减弱了动词的力量也使句子失去了活力(most of the time, a descriptive verb will suffice) — 如果你不是故意而为之的话. 例如上一段中用到了 “justifiably”这个副词，就是故意用了来调侃副词的多余。
我们平时或许会写出 “She smiled happily” 这样的句子 — no one would smile happily while reading your (un)carefully crafted sentence. The norm is to smile when you're happy. Only an unusual smile needs the highlighting of an adverb–a crafty smile or a resigned smile may merit a descriptor.
在写作的时候要尽量避免用 “extremely” “definitely” “very” “really” — the ones often used carelessly as intensifiers. 解决的方法是去找到更恰当的动词或者形容词来让你的表达有力量, 有感情。
例如刚看到一句话 “When you peruse your close-to-final draft, critique your adverbs on a usefulness scale.” 这里的peruse就是一个很好的词, 它的意思是 “read thoroughly and carefully” — 找到那个更有效的动词。
如果你夸一个女孩子漂亮, 你可以说她beautiful. 但是你的女神不是very/really/more beautiful — 试试用gorgeous, stunning, elegent,charming,angelic,marvelous… 或者你可以说 “Your smile is so dazzling” “I like your eyes. They look like water in the sunshine”… 总之不要像个小孩子一样: 你非常非常非常非常漂亮 — 找到那个更有效的形容词。
And while we’re at it, let’s retire “decidedly” and all its slippery cousins. Every day I see in the paper that some situations are decidedly better and others are decidedly worse, but I never know how decided the improvement is, or who did the deciding, just as I never know how eminent a result is that’s eminently fair, or whether to believe a fact that’s arguably true. “He’s arguably the best pitcher on the Mets,” the preening sportswriter writes, aspiring to Parnassus, which Red Smith reached by never using words like “arguably.” Is the pitcher—it can be proved by argument—the best pitcher on the team? If so, please omit “arguably.” Or is he perhaps—the opinion is open to argument—the best pitcher? Admittedly I don’t know. It’s virtually a toss-up.
副词如同蒲公英。
你或许会写，或者读过这样的句子: “Shut up!” Eric said angrily.
Angrily在这里是多余的: Let the substance of the dialogue get across the way it’s being said. 在这方面, Stephen King深恶痛绝:
“I insist that you use the adverb in dialogue attribution only in the rarest and most special of occasions… and not even then, if you can avoid it.”
他举了以下的例子:
接着他控诉说:
The three latter sentences are all weaker than the three former ones, and most readers will see why immediately. “Don’t be such a fool, Jekyll,” Utterson said contemptuously is the best of the lot; it is only a cliché, while the other two are actively ludicrous.
读过这篇文章，你会发现你读过的许多文章中都或多或少的有“明知故犯” -- Do as I say, not I do! Stephen King也承认自己 “I’m just another ordinary sinner”. 他的理由是:
When I do it, it’s usually for the same reason any writer does it: because I am afraid the reader won’t understand me if I don’t”.
无论是The Element of Style, On Writing Well, 还是Stephen King的 On Writing, 大概都有一个共识: timidity is at the root of most bad writing. 我们怕别人读不懂，于是就啰啰嗦嗦；我们不想让别人看出来其实我们自己都没有想清楚，于是就大量的使用被动语态。 除此之外，但凡试图给语言定个规矩的都免不了被一些人批斗。我们膜拜“风格的要素”为写作圣经，可也有许多人对之嗤之以鼻。EB White在修订恩师的写作圣经的时候坦白说: “我了解恩师受不了the fact that这个表达，可是我很多时候也会滥用”。尽管如此还是有像William Zinsser, Stephen King这样的优秀作家苦口婆心的来写这种“写作圣经”, “There is core simplicity to the English language and its American variant, but it’s a slippery core.”
对我们来讲，用不着“锱铢必较”,“副词洁癖”.我们去了解学习, 阅读琢磨, 争取在写作中找到我们的思考和声音, find our humanity! 如同Stephen所说: All I ask is that you do as well as you can, and remember that, while to write adverbs is human, to write he said or she said is divine. 总结来说就是学会:learn, unlearn, and relearn(感受一下)
回到标题的图片:
毁掉一句名言的方法之一就是给它加上副词:
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