Goodbye to adverbs, she says reluctantly

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adverbs

Adverbs, we are told by the experts, ruin our writing. They are the mark of the amateur.

There are fashions in creative writing rather like there are in cooking. (Just now chilli is everywhere; it’s hard to find a recipe or a menu choice without it. Not good if you aren’t too keen on a burning mouth and throat, but never mind, in a few years it’ll be some other ingredient). But is the wholesale rejection of adverbs here to stay or just the current creative writing bandwagon?

I don’t like feeling bossed into following a writing style recipe, but after having a go at getting rid of all the adverbs from a story I have to admit that the anti-adverb brigade has a point. I hadn’t realised how these -ly words had crept in – and weren’t actually needed. Lazy writing? Well, yes. Cutting them out or creating original images to give the same effect – even if this meant using several words rather than the one adverb – gave the writing a fresher, cleaner and sharper impact. It was also a surprisingly enjoyable and imaginative exercise.

I wonder if competition judges and agents stop reading when they come upon an adverb?

 

A Plurality of Grammars

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grammar, Today

During the Today news programme on BBC Radio 4 this morning there was a feature about grammar. Or, to be more precise, bad grammar. The discussion was inspired by The Bad Grammar Awards due to be presented today. The awards are intended to alert people to the decline in grammatical standards, but the discussion quickly turned to a ‘left’ v. ‘right’ debate on how strict English standards should be.

The speaker from the ‘left’, Professor Michael McCarthy of the University of Nottingham, opined that English had a ‘plurality of grammars’: a grammar for speaking; a grammar for writing; a grammar for broadcasting; and so on. This statement struck a chord with me. Having studied many languages over the years, what distinguishes English – and what I love about it – is its great dynamism, a dynamism that both informs and reflects the underlying culture. I admire the ingenuity of text language and the utility of global business English as much as the finest prose. If we were to have an ‘official’ grammar, who would be the officials? Straitjacketing the language straitjackets the culture, the society and the economy. Just look at modern France with its Académie. There is a reason English has become a global lingua franca.

I know many won’t agree. Professor McCarthy spoke of the ‘pif’ or ‘public irritation factor’ that occurs when someone persistently misuses certain words or forms. Some people can’t abide a dangling participle even though the alternative might sound stiff, convoluted or just plain wrong. But, ultimately, usage will decide what’s acceptable and what’s not. That’s the only standard I need.

A small point about spelling

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Noun, Verb

The Master of the Small Point – the pedantic mother in Sarah Frances’ novel So Perfect on the Surface – shares one of her favourite small points …

 Once you’ve discovered there are quite a few words in British English with alternative spellings (e.g. focused/focussed, adviser/advisor, judgement/judgment) you may think words like ‘practice’ and ‘licence’ – which you often see written as ‘practise’ and ‘license’ – also have interchangeable spellings.  But that would be wrong (unless the pleasure of belonging to a large, like-minded crowd outweighs this kind of worry). There’s a simple underlying rule that governs the different spellings.   If these words are used as nouns, e.g. ‘he has a licence to kill’ or ‘he has a GP practice’, the second ‘c’ remains a ‘c’.  If they are used as verbs, the second ‘c’ becomes an ‘s’, e.g. ‘you must license your car’; ‘I must practise the piano’.  If you can’t remember which way round the difference is, just think of ‘advice’ (noun) and ‘advise’ (verb) where you can hear the difference.  (Or you could move to the US where both noun and verb of ‘practice’ are spelt ‘practice’, and both noun and verb of ‘licence’ are spelt ‘license’ – but then you’d have to remember which way round these work and you won’t get any help from ‘advise’ and ‘advice’!)  

Sarah