Grammar - Facts About Adverbs - Part Three

How to spot an adverb

Adverbs can be quite complicated. This is because you cannot tell an adverb by looking at it. You can tell an adverb by what it does in a sentence.

• The play went well – The word ‘well’ describes the verb ‘went’, so ‘well’ is the adverb.

• The well had to be drained by noon – The word well in this sentence names something, therefore it is a noun

• The well water tasted foul – The word well in this sentence is used to name the type of water rather than being a describing word. The word well in this sentence is not an adverb.

When you see ‘ly’ on the end of a word in a sentence, this is usually a good indication of an adverb as this is how many adverbs are created.

The word careful is an adjective, when you add ‘ly’ to make it carefully, it becomes an adverb.

However, this isn’t a hard and fast rule and some adverbs are irregular. Not all words that end in ‘ly’ are actually adverbs. There following words do end in ‘ly’ but are not adverbs:

• Friendly

• Lovely

• Lonely

Some words are adverbs as well as adjectives. These are words that can be used in different ways in a sentence and how they are positioned will tell us whether or not they are adverbs.

The two words ‘hard’ and ‘early’ are adverbs and adjectives. When they are adjectives they tell us about people, things and places. When they are adverbs they give us more information about the verb used.

• They arrived early – adverb

• She works extremely hard – adverb

• It is still early – adjective

• She is a hard woman to get along with - adjective

You can read the other articles in this series here:

Part One

Part Two