Ah, the humble adverb. Writers use adverbs to emphasize a point, deepen a sentiment, refine an action. The problem is, adverbs do just the opposite.
Consider this sentence. “I am truly sorry.” The adverb “truly” qualifies “sorry.” The listener's obvious question is, “As opposed to not being truly sorry?” Adverbs rob good words of their power.
Or how about, “I quickly ran to the store.” “Quickly” qualifies “run.” But “quick” is a property of the verb “run.” After all, you don't run anywhere slowly. Adverbs often harbor redundancies.
My freshman English teacher taught me and my classmates something wonderful about adverbs: They can be obliterated. In a vocabulary lesson, he asked us to list as many synonyms for the verb “walk” as we could think of. I came up with “stride,” “tiptoe,” “trot,” “saunter,” and so on. In a 10-minute exercise, Mr. Parker showed me that you can best describe an action by using a precise verb. Consider the verb “saunter.” Isn't “She sauntered down the street” more vivid than “She walked slowly down the street”? And this wonderful word conveys the actor's mood, too. After all, you saunter when you're calm, confident, but not when you're downtrodden or tired. Adverbs—unlike precise verbs such as “saunter”—make something specific into something vague or weak.
But in technical communication, they can do more damage than that: They can thwart the purpose of the document itself. How many times have you read a sentence like this: “Using our product, you can quickly and easily organize your computer files.” Or this: “Please click the File menu.” (Yes, “please” is an adverb here.)
In technical documents, which are by definition factual, adverbs reveal opinion, salesmanship, or writer sentiment. (For example, when a writer uses “please,” she's trying to avoid sounding harsh to the user.) So the next time you catch yourself typing an adverb, ask yourself why. Are you telling the user what you think, trying to convince her of something, or tiptoeing around her feelings? Don't.
Or maybe I should say, “Please don't.”
Afterthought: I edited this post several times in an attempt to get rid of the adverbs I'd used outside of my example sentences. I couldn't eradicate all of them. Adverbs are insidious word weeds.
Karen Field Carroll is a senior technical writer, author, and plain language advocate. She and her husband live in Arizona with their German shepherd, Gunther, and their cat, Callie. Visit her blog at http://www.write2help.com.