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piperofyork
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Assuredly!Ponder wisely.
Assuredly!Ponder wisely.
Well Hemmingway said to distrust adverbs - that's not the same as never using them (he did use them, just a lot less than most writers).
As a general rule I'd say don't use them if they add nothing or if they simply state the obvious. Only use them if they add something meaningful that would be absent if you didn't have them there.
Saki was a master of adverb use. But then again he was probably the most talented technical writer in the English language of the C20th. Here is one of his classics, using the adverb "enormously":
He is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death
Now that I've got started on Saki, here's another good example of his use of adverbs. It is from his short story - Tobermory (Tobermory being a cat who learns to speak - everyone is amazed by this and thinks it's great ... until it turns out that the cat has some rather uncomfortable opinions of his own that he is not shy about sharing with humans).
“What do you think of human intelligence?" asked Mavis Pellington lamely.
"Of whose intelligence in particular?" asked Tobermory coldly.
"Oh, well, mine for instance," said Mavis with a feeble laugh.
"You put me in an embarrassing position," said Tobermory, whose tone and attitude certainly did not suggest a shred of embarrassment. "When your inclusion in this house-party was suggested Sir Wilfrid protested that you were the most brainless woman of his acquaintance, and that there was a wide distinction between hospitality and the care of the feeble-minded. Lady Blemley replied that your lack of brain-power was the precise quality which had earned you your invitation, as you were the only person she could think of who might be idiotic enough to buy their old car. You know, the one they call 'The Envy of Sisyphus,' because it goes quite nicely up-hill if you push it.”
well this certainly puts a different spin on the conversation
So the narrator can be felt, the narrator is spinning this tale, but the reader may almost forget the existence of the narrator while reading. The reader becomes a sort of co-conspirator but without knowing this is so, heh, and takes the narration at face value.