Love his description of his Sanpete County nanna.
Kirby: This troglodyte can keep pace with technology | The Salt Lake Tribune.
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We writers hold it in such low regard. Yes, I know, a strong verb has more muscle than a modifier.
“He yelled,” packs more punch than: “He said loudly.”
And yet, listening to my nephew Logan reading the opening pages of a “Harry Potter” book this past holiday, I was struck by how fond J.K. Rowling seemed to be of the lowly adverb. She had sprinkled adverbs throughout those pages and they did not appear to upset or disturb Logan in any way.
I noticed, but I am a cranky reporter and often envious of the freedoms enjoyed by those who practice less constrained writing. Many a writing mentor has red-lined and otherwise scolded the adverb out of me. Maybe the Brits don’t mind it as much.
So is the adverb all that bad? Is it the “um” of writing, a little placeholder while we collect our thoughts?
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“Nor can we hurry change, which has a calendar of its own. The best and the unique turnings in life are never forced, their roots have been growing in us underground for a long time, without our conscious notice, awaiting only what Jung calls a ‘meaningful coincidence.’”
This is from novelist Dorothy Gilman, who wrote the “Mrs. Pollifax” mysteries, plus a little gem of a book about her own search for independence, “A New Kind of Country.” The quote comes from page 74 of the 1978 paperback edition.
