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Nouns and Verbs Versus Adjectives and Adverbs
- University of Iowa Press
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{ 47 Nouns and verbs are the workhorses of writing.Whether you’re telling a story, explaining an idea, making a report , or sharing your feelings, the gist of what you have to say is carried by nouns and verbs. Try to communicate without them and you’ll see what I mean. Without nouns and verbs, you’ll be reduced to brief exclamations and queries, such as “Wonderful!” and “Why not?” With them, you can explain things, as I’ve just done in the preceding sentences, or you can tell about a memorable experience , as in the following paragraph from my vertigo story. After getting into bed one evening and resting my head on the pillow, I noticed the room moving a bit to the right. Then the movement speeded up until the room was spinning, and my head felt as if it too had been spinning. I tried to resist the movement by focusing on the dresser across from my bed, but the dresser, like the picture hanging above it, was also moving. And I began to panic. If you examine the words I’ve used in this version of my story, you’ll notice that it doesn’t contain any adjectives or adverbs.The nouns, pronouns, and verbs are not modified in any way, because they don’t need it. But I Nouns and Verbs versus Adjectives and Adverbs 48 } know how tempting it would be to accentuate the details with adjectives and adverbs, for I’ve used them in other versions of my story. And I’ve decided to include some of them here in another version of the paragraph you’ve just read, so you can see the difference between writing with and without them: After getting into bed one midwinter evening and resting my head gently on the pillow, I noticed the room beginning to move slowly to the right. Then the movement quickly speeded up until the room was spinning very rapidly, and my dizzy head felt as if it too had been spinning. I tried to resist the movement by focusing intently on the dresser across from my bed, but the dresser, like the picture hanging above it, was also moving. And suddenly I began to panic. As you can see, I’ve added six adverbs and two adjectives , all of which might seem relevant at first sight, but none of which provides crucial information. It’s not necessary , for example, to know the episode took place in “midwinter”; it’s somewhat redundant to say the room was “beginning to move slowly”; likewise it goes without saying that a “dizzy head” would feel as if it “had been spinning”; and “focusing” on a dresser or any other object would bydefinition bedone “intently.” Besides, all of those adverbs ending in “ly” call attention to themselves rather than to the verbs they modify. So it’s no wonder the novelist Stephen King was moved to say that “the road to hell is paved with adverbs.” He might well have said the same thing about adjectives, but Mark Twain beat him to the punch, advising that “when you catch an [44.203.235.24] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 20:32 GMT) { 49 adjective, kill it. No, I don’t mean utterly, but kill most of them—then the rest will be valuable.They weaken when they are close together.They give strength when they are wide apart.” By following Twain’s advice to use adjectives and adverbs in moderation, not only will your prose be stronger, given its focus on nouns and verbs, but your persona will come across as being forceful and direct. So I’d like you to rewrite a paragraph from your memorable experience without using any adjectives or adverbs. Then rewrite it again, using adjectives and adverbs only when you consider them necessary to convey important information that would otherwise be missing. Finally, write a paragraph reflecting on your assessment of these two different versions. ...