Adverbs are great, right? They let you describe how an action went down — whether it was walking quickly or sleeping soundly or yelling loudly. But if adverbs are so great, why do editors like me ...

Use adverbs sparingly. At their best, they spice up a verb or adjective. At their worst, they express a meaning already contained in the sentence: The blast completely destroyed the church office. The ...

So how do we produce readable and clean scientific writing? One of the good elements of style is to avoid adverbs and adjectives (Zinsser 2006). Adjectives and adverbs sprinkle paper with unnecessary ...