Debunking the widespread canard that adverbs are bad for writing

Some writers and teachers of English ruthlessly denigrate adverbs in the same way as adjectives, with one of them even declaring that “most of the work of effective writing is that of selecting verbs and nouns which make adverbs and adjectives unnecessary.” As I observed in my long-ago essay in defense of adverbs (English Plain and Simple, Section 3, Chapter 17), they say such things as if English prose could, in fact, survive solely on a diet of verbs and nouns with absolutely no adverbs and adjectives. This isn’t the case at all. There are bad adverbs as there are bad adjectives, of course, and overusing them—particularly lazy adverbs ending in “-ly” such as “quickly” and “fantastically”—could indeed induce a bad case of reading nausea. But there are good, functional adverbs that we can’t afford to write totally without, and chief among them are the adverbs of time and the adverbs of frequency.

In an essay that I wrote for my English-usage column in The Manila Times and that now forms part of my book Give Your English the Winning Edge, I explained that the adverbs of time and the adverbs of frequency are the defining elements of the tenses. Our verbs need them for context in the time continuum, and only by putting them to work can we clearly convey to our readers or listeners the time frame, sequence, and frequency of the actions—grammatically, the verbs we use—in our narratives. I am now posting that essay here to counteract the widespread canard that adverbs as a whole are bad for our written and spoken English. (September 26, 2011)

Using the adverbs of time to clarify tense

When an action or event has taken place and how often it has taken place are abstractions that reside solely in our memory or in some recording medium like newspapers, books, and film. They no longer have a physical existence of their own. In contrast, we can easily put the “who,” “what,” “where,” and “how” of things in concrete terms. For instance, we can identify ourselves with nameplates or hang shingles to identify the occupants of doctor’s clinics, law offices, legislatures, and zoos (nouns); we can label certain faces, books, movies, or political maneuverings as disgusting, compelling, or noble (adjectives); or we can mark certain places and behaviors as uncommonly decent, unbelievably tawdry, or ignominiously warped (adverbs that modify adjectives).

It’s not as easy, however, to put our fingers on events in time. Making sense of the unfolding present and of the future is difficult enough, but understanding past events is even more so. This is because the latter have already passed through the time continuum to become abstractions, and our usual conceptual tools for dealing with them—the tenses acting on verbs—are inadequate to communicate them in context. Thus, whether reckoning with the past, present, or future, we need the adverbs of time and of frequency to convey them intelligibly to other people and to keep our thoughts of them alive.

Examine this simple sentence: “Look for the money.” The simple imperative of this sentence sounds clear enough. But on closer scrutiny, we discover that its call for action is inadequate and imprecise: How soon should we look for the money? Precisely when should we do it? How long should we do? Now see what happens when we clarify the sentence with adverbs of time: “Look for the money now.” “Look for the money tonight after office hours.” “Look for the money during the next three hours.” The adverbs of time have given the sentences precise, actionable meanings.

Not let’s examine another sentence: “He paints landscapes.” With no antecedent statement to establish context, it borders on the trivial. But see how it springs to life and relevance with the use adverbs of frequency: “He rarely paints landscapes.” “He regularly paints landscapes.” “He paints landscapes twice a month.” In each case the statement has become more real and palpable to us.

Indeed, the tenses by themselves can only give us a general sense of something occurring. By making the adverbs of time work with them, however, we can pinpoint the precise moment or period of their occurrence. The adverbs of time are, in fact, the defining elements of the tenses. Using the adverb “currently,” for instance, leaves us no choice but to use the present or present progressive tense: “She currently works with the United Nations secretariat.” “She is currently working with the United Nations secretariat.”

In contrast, when we use “recently,” we are forced to use the past tense or past progressive tense: “She recently worked with the United Nations secretariat.” “She was recently working with the United Nations secretariat.”

The adverbs of time are particularly crucial in establishing the perfect tenses—when an action has to be related to other actions happening before or after it. Take this example: “The woman had [already, just, barely, scarcely] dressed up when her lover knocked at the front door.” The adverbs of time create immediacy and tension in juxtaposed actions, and they do so in ways that the tenses alone can never achieve. Along with the adverbs of frequency, the adverbs of time heighten our awareness of our own actions in relation to the unfolding reality around us: “I knocked at her bedroom door once, twice, three times, then finally without letup, but there was no response; it was then, only then, that I realized that she had left me for good.”

The need to clearly mark in our minds the sequence and frequency of occurrences is so crucial that the English language has evolved scores of adverbs of time and of frequency. Take a look at the following short list:

Past adverbs of time:  “ago,” “after,” “already,” “once,” “before,” “beforehand,” “when,” “recently,” “then,” “since,” “since then,” “yesterday,” “last week.” “last month,” “last quarter,” and “last year.”

Present adverbs of time:  “now,” “nowadays,” “lately,” “of late,” “while,” “at this moment,” “at last,” “today,” and “tonight.”

Future adverbs of time:  “when,” “presently,” “soon,” “tomorrow,” “yet,” “as soon as possible” (ASAP), “later,” “after,” “immediately,” “heretofore,” “hereafter,” “henceforth,” “next day,” “next week,” “next month,” and “next year.”

Adverbs for continuous or repeated actions:  “by and by,” “again,” “occasionally,” “until,” “till,” “while,” “forever,” “always,” “off and on,” “continually,” “continuously,” “often,” “at length,” and “perpetually.”

Adverbs of frequency:  “rarely,” “seldom,” “frequently,” “sometimes,” “oftentimes,” “now and then,” “never,” “once,” “twice,” “thrice,” “daily,” “nightly,” “weekly,” “monthly,” “quarterly,” “annually,” and “seasonally.”

These adverbs of time and adverbs of frequency are, of course, not the only ones we can find in the language. We can actually create hundreds more by using them as basic building blocks, and the more effectively we can make them work with the tenses, the better we can understand the things that happen in our lives and the clearer we can communicate them to others.

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From the book Give Your English the Winning Edge by Jose A. Carillo © 2009 by the author, © 2010 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

When media permits a grammatically flawed official statement to see print

If you are a reporter for an English-language media outlet, what’s the proper way to report the official statements of people who speak in less than impeccable English? Do you quote them verbatim—grammar errors and all—for total and uncompromising journalistic objectivity? Or do you correct their statements for grammar and usage errors so as not to embarrass them and avoid foisting bad English on your readers or listeners?

Of course, English-savvy reporters and editors faced with this dilemma routinely do the right thing—quote  statements verbatim when they are truly quotable and free of grammar errors, or else paraphrase those statements when they aren’t really quote-worthy and are grammatically faulty as well. But sometimes, when reporters or editors lower their guard or are themselves not very proficient in English, they let pass quoted statements that reflect very badly not only on those who gave or uttered them but also on those who reported or edited them. 

This is what happened in the case of the quoted statement I dissected in the essay below, which I wrote for my English-usage column in The Manila Times way back in 2006. I am posting it here as a practical lesson in grammar and usage as well as an exercise in basic copyediting. (September 18, 2011) 

An exercise in reporting a grammatically flawed statement

Assume that you are a reporter of a major daily newspaper and that you have just covered a media conference of an international foreign-aid organization. During the conference, the organization’s highest-ranking official in the country said these exact words in English: “The best time to prevent bird flu is now. Until the cases are low, let us stay ahead of the epidemic.”

Something is terribly wrong with that statement’s English, of course, and you’re sure that the speaker wasn’t misquoted because you had taped the interview. But your deadline is only two hours away, so you must decide right now how to deal with that statement in your story.

What will you do with its bad English?

(A) Quote the exact words of the speaker. It’s true that its English is faulty, but since the statement came from a well-educated medical professional, you feel that every word of it should be respected and retained. They are not your own words, after all, and you’re secure in your belief that people who talk to media should be held responsible for their bad English. If it gets printed verbatim and embarrasses them, that’s just too bad. Your job is to report the news accurately and clearly, not to correct other people’s poor English.

(B) Analyze the grammar and semantics of the statement carefully to see how best to report it. You believe that no respectable paper should give room for bad English, whether attributed or unattributed. You know that when reporters habitually allow bad English to creep into their stories, they can seriously jeopardize not only their reputation but also the integrity of their information sources and of their respective newspapers.

Some newspaper reporters and magazine writers are sometimes tempted to take the line of least resistance by choosing option A, but for any self-respecting journalist, Option B is actually the only prudent course of action. We will therefore assume that most of us have chosen Option B and are now ready to find better ways of expressing the problematic direct quotation presented earlier.

The English of the first sentence, “The best time to prevent bird flu is now,” is arguably good enough so we’ll let it stand as is. That of the second sentence, however, is seriously flawed and confusing: “Until the cases are low, let us stay ahead of the epidemic.” The speaker has wrongly used the conjunction “until” to mean “up to the time that,” in the sense that a particular state is not yet achieved. But she acknowledges that the particular state being referred to (“low”) already subsists or persists, so the correct conjunction to use is “while,” which means “during the time that.” “Until” is an illogical, semantically wrong substitute for “while” in this particular sentence.

Next, the speaker commits another serious gaffe when she inappropriately describes the noun “cases” using the adjective “low,” which is intended to mean “of lesser degree, size, or amount than average or ordinary.” In English grammar, such usage doesn’t make semantic sense. We can’t describe “cases” of a particular noun, such as bird flu, as either “low” or “high”; there can be no “low cases” and “high cases.” It is the incidence of “cases” that can be described as such. To give an idea of their relative numbers, the adjectives “few” and “many” (or “numerous”) should be used instead.

The speaker’s use of the phrase “stay ahead” in her second sentence, although not strictly wrong grammatically, is also questionable semantically. The verb “stay” denotes “pausing,” “ceasing,” and “remaining,” thus giving a strong sense of a stationary state rather than a forward movement, which is obviously what the speaker wanted to convey. Since the verb “keep” more appropriately conveys the active effort needed to maintain the condition of being ahead, “keep ahead” would be a much more suitable phrase.

When we take all these clarifications into account, what emerges as the grammatically and semantically correct way of saying what the speaker actually said is this: “The best time to prevent bird flu is now. While its incidence is still low, let us keep ourselves ahead of the epidemic.” Another correct construction is this: “The best time to prevent bird flu is now. While the cases are still few, let us keep ourselves ahead of the epidemic.”

Of course, we must remember that we can’t present these two improved versions as the exact words of the speaker herself. It’s a time-honored convention in journalism that once we make substantive changes in the speaker’s exact words, we can no longer treat them as directly quoted material. They become a paraphrased statement, which does away with the quotation marks that set off verbatim statements from their attribution. (January 4, 2006)

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, January 4, 2006 © 2006 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

The construction of comparative sentences involving possessives

In English, it’s quite a simple thing to compare two entities directly, as in “Eve was perhaps older than Adam by a few days,” but the grammar gets somewhat more complicated when what’s to be compared is an attribute, a possession, or a part of those entities. Indeed, how do we correctly construct a sentence comparing the heights of the Great Pyramid of Giza and of the Eiffel Tower in Paris? We can’t say “The height of the Eiffel Tower is 77.5 meters greater than the Great Pyramid of Giza”—not because the given figure is wrong but because the grammar of the comparative isn’t right. So then, how do we construct the comparison correctly?

In my essay below that came out in my English-usage column in The Manila Times in October of 2010, I explained to a Forum member precisely how to make such a comparative sentence grammatically aboveboard in every respect. (September 11, 2011)

Differentiating the use of “than” and “than that of” 

In making comparisons, when should “than that of” be used instead of “than”?

I was asked this question several days ago by a student-member of Jose Carillo’s English Forum whose username is Forces20. She said she wanted to understand the logic behind the choice between the two comparative forms.

She wrote: “Let’s consider this sentence as an example: ‘As a teacher, his salary is even less than that of a driver.’ Why shouldn’t this sentence be written instead as ‘As a teacher, his salary is even less than a driver’?

“Also this sentence: ‘The new library is undoubtedly well-stocked and functional but no one can say that its atmosphere is like the old one.’ Why should it be revised to this: ‘The new library is undoubtedly well-stocked and functional but no one can say that its atmosphere is like that of the old one’?”

I explained to Forces20 that the fundamental difference between the comparatives “than” and “than that of” is in the nature of the elements being compared. We use “than” when we compare two objects or things directly with each other, as in “Your laptop is more powerful than my laptop” or, more succinctly, “Your laptop is more powerful than mine.”

On the other hand, we use “than that of” when we compare not the two objects or things themselves but an attribute, possession, or part of theirs, as in “The processor of your laptop is more powerful than that of mine.” This particular comparative construction is, of course, an elliptical, more succinct version of this sentence: “The processor of your laptop is more powerful than the processor of your laptop.” The pointing pronoun “that” replaces the name of the thing whose attribute, possession, or part is being compared with that of the other, and the pronoun “mine” replaces the name of the other thing involved in the comparison.

If we simply use “than” instead of “than that of” when comparing the attribute, possession, or part of the elements being compared, a semantic problem or ambiguity in meaning might result, as in this sentence: “The processor of your laptop is more powerful than mine.” Here, it’s not clear if the pronoun “mine” refers to the processor of the other person’s laptop or to the laptop itself. The form “than that of” clarifies that ambiguity: “The processor of your laptop is more powerful than that of mine.”

Now, in the examples Forces20 presented, the sentence “As a teacher, his salary is even less than a driver” is grammatically flawed because it is illogically comparing the teacher’s salary to the driver, not to the driver’s salary. The comparative form “less than that of” fixes the problem: “As a teacher, his salary is even less than that of a driver.”

The other sentence she presented, “The new library is undoubtedly well-stocked and functional but no one can say that its atmosphere is like the old one,” has the same problem. It wrongly compares the atmosphere of the new library with the old library itself, when the real comparison should be between their respective atmospheres. The use of the comparative form “like that of” corrects and clarifies that comparison: “The new library is undoubtedly well-stocked and functional but no one can say that its atmosphere is like that of the old one.”

But the form “than that of” may not be necessary in some comparative constructions involving possessives. Take a look at these two examples: “Albert’s grade in science is higher than Bert’s.” Its version that uses “than that of” for the comparison is also correct but less straightforward: “Albert’s grade in science is higher than that of Bert.” On the other hand, this sentence, “Our basketball team’s record is more impressive than our competitor’s,” is more concise and better-sounding than “Our basketball team’s record is more impressive than that of our competitor.” (October 23, 2010)

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, October 23, 2010 © 2010 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

P.S. For those who’d like to know precisely how I got the figure “77.5 meters,” here’s the bit of arithmetic that I did: The Eiffel Tower is 324 meters high, and the Great Pyramid of Giza is 146.5 meters high, so the former is higher than the latter by 324 meters minus 146.5 meters = 77.5 meters. Following the grammar prescription in the above essay, therefore, the correct and concise sentence construction for that comparative is this: “The height of the Eiffel Tower is 77.5 meters greater than that of the Great Pyramid of Giza.”

The wisdom of routinely avoiding anticipatory “there is/there are” clauses

Let’s face it. A lot of people—native or nonnative English speakers alike—get into the habit of using the so-called anticipatory “there is/there are” clause when talking off the cuff, as in “There’s something fishy happening but I just can’t figure it out.” It does sound and feel as the easiest and most natural thing to begin talking, even if many teachers of English pointedly advise that it’s better and more concise to knock off that anticipatory clause and simply say “Something’s fishy but I just can’t figure it out.” As many of us will probably remember, their chief but seemingly counterintuitive argument against “there is/there are” clauses is that it just fosters lazy thinking among its users.

In an essay I wrote for my English-usage column in The Manila Times in April of 2010, I discussed an even stronger reason for routinely avoiding anticipatory “there is/there are” clauses—the fact that the usage is fraught with subject-verb disagreement pitfalls when used indiscriminately. I am now posting that essay here to serve as a continuing reminder of the wisdom of that cautionary advice. (September 4, 2011)

The pitfalls in using “there is”/“there are” clauses

A few days ago, I received through e-mail the following very interesting grammar question from Dantreys, a member of Jose Carillo’s English Forum:

“Hi, Joe! An opinion writer in one of the major broadsheets wrote an article yesterday that contained this sentence:

“‘There was once a time when there was more than one exchange existing all at the same time.’

“I feel a bit queasy about the sentence because something tells me the correct verb right before ‘more’ should be ‘were’ since it refers to ‘more than one exchange,’ which, notionally, is a plural subject. What do you think?”

Here’s my reply to Dantreys:

The sentence in question is an example of a construction that uses the so-called “anticipatory ‘there’ clause” twice. The pronoun “there,” of course, is the anticipatory subject in each case. In such constructions, “there” carries little or no independent meaning but simply points forward to the notional subject that’s placed later in the sentence for reasons of end weight or emphasis. That notional subject is the noun phrase “once a time” for the first anticipatory “there,” and “more than one exchange” for the second anticipatory “there.”

Now, your question is: Since the operative verb “was” refers to “more than one exchange,” which is a plural subject, shouldn’t that verb take the plural form “were” instead to ensure subject-verb agreement?

The correct usage in this case remains debatable today, but my personal preference is to use the singular “was” instead of “were”; in effect, I’m saying that the use of “was” by that broadsheet’s opinion writer is grammatically correct. This usage preference is the so-called descriptivist position, which maintains that since the “there is” combination is mostly followed by a singular subject, it has become a standard way of introducing a subject, whether singular or plural.  

In American English, in particular, when a compound subject follows the verb in a “there is” construction, the verb very often takes the singular form, as in this sentence: “There is shame and dishonor in being found to be unfit for public office.” See and feel how badly that sentence sounds when “there are” is used instead: “There are shame and dishonor in being found to be unfit for public office.”

The prescriptivist position, on the other hand, recommends that after the expletive “there,” the verb is singular or plural depending on whether the subject that follows is singular or plural. This is actually the usage that you said you’re more comfortable with: “There was once a time when there were more than one exchange existing all at the same time.” It looks and sounds a little bit awkward to me, but I’m not saying that it’s grammatically wrong. So long as you are consistent with the usage and you can explain your position, I don’t think there should be any problem.

Having said that, however, let me add that English teachers of the traditional bent discourage the use of the expletives “there is” (and “it is”) by students, arguing that this usage fosters lazy thinking. My own position is that expletives are tolerable when used sparingly and judiciously—perhaps no more than once or twice every one or two pages of the standard manuscript page. But when the anticipatory “there” is used twice in a row in the same sentence, which is the case in that opinion writer’s sentence, the resulting construction is decidedly awkward and convoluted.

As an editor, in fact, I always suggest routinely avoiding “there is” constructions because of their needless, oftentimes confusing complexity. It’s better to simplify the sentence in question by eliminating the second of its anticipatory “there” clauses: “There was once a time when more than one exchange existed all at the same time.” Better still, by eliminating the first anticipatory “there” clause as well: “One time, more than one exchange existed all at the same time.” (April 10, 2010)

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, April 10, 2010 © 2010 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.