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The Right Tool for the Job
By Karen Irving | November 17, 2009
A debate has been raging over the past few days in one of my LinkedIn groups. Proponents on both sides have advanced arguments and theories, knowledgeable and otherwise, on the topic at hand. Swords have been brandished, fists shaken.
It should come as no surprise that this dispute revolves around grammar—to provoke the fiercest debates on the Internet, all you need to do is proclaim some purported grammatical rule or another, and then sit back and watch the fun. In this case, the topic is “adverbs ending in –ly.” Not exactly soul-stirring stuff, unless you fancy yourself a writer or editor.
Here’s the question: Are –ly adverbs going out of fashion? Discuss.
On the “yes” side, many seem to think that using adverbs ending in –ly (slowly, quickly, foolishly) break the cardinal creative writing rule of “show, don’t tell.” I learned this rule when I was writing crime fiction: don’t tell the reader what’s going on; describe the scene and make it come alive. For example, rather than “she ran quickly down the street,” a creative writer might write, “she broke into a run, and the sound of her own footsteps echoed back to her as she dashed along the empty street.” Or something like that.
On the “no” side, others argue that adverbs do an excellent job of summarizing—they say in a single word what could otherwise take several. So “he said in a plaintive tone” could become “he said plaintively,” turning six words into three. “Plaintively” telegraphs a message to the reader, and saves him or her the trouble of reading the extraneous words.
So who’s right?
As the great Jewish philosopher Tevye said in Fiddler on the Roof, “You’re right! And you’re right, too! You’re both right!” In creative writing, “show, don’t tell” is an excellent rule of thumb. The creative writer’s task is to draw the reader into another world, to paint a verbal picture full of telling detail and engage the reader’s imagination.
But for the journalist or report writer, brevity is the name of the game. At The Conference Publishers, we turn conference content into online session summaries, news capsules, summary reports, and all sorts of variations thereof. Our goal is to capture and summarize the words we hear onsite, and sum them up swiftly and economically. It’s why our clients hire us in the first place: we know that more words are not always better.
When I’m briefing writers and editors before a project, I put it this way: “You have an allowance. I’m giving you 350 (or 500, or 1,200) words. I want you to spend each word wisely, and I don’t want a single word wasted.” For this kind of writing, adverbs—those ending in –ly or otherwise—can be just the thing.
Topics: Conference Blogs, Conference Content, The Conference Publishers |