These words modify your “doing” and “describing” words, known as verbs and adjectives. Here’s how to use them!
Author
Christina Levandowski
Published
March 2024
These words modify your “doing” and “describing” words, known as verbs and adjectives. Here’s how to use them!
Author
Christina Levandowski
Published
March 2024
These words modify your “doing” and “describing” words, known as verbs and adjectives. Here’s how to use them!
Author
Christina Levandowski
Published
March 2024
Key takeaways
Table of contents
Adverbs are modifiers that give us more information about a sentence. They typically modify verbs and adjectives — although sometimes, they can modify entire sentences or other adverbs!
Learning how to use adverbs in your schoolwork and speech allows you to communicate clearly with whoever you’re speaking or writing to. You’ll use them in your schoolwork, essays, and speeches, and you’ll also use them in your daily conversation. (We bet you’ve already been using adverbs in your daily life!)
Ready to dig in? Read on to learn more about the role that adverbs play in almost all of your sentences.
Adverbs are singular words that modify (or describe) adjectives, verbs, sentences, and other adverbs. They’re often used to add detail to speech and written work — explaining how an action is happening or how the speaker or the writer is feeling about whatever statement is about to be said or written.
Adjectives describe, or modify, nouns. Nouns are people, places, and things. Adverbs, on the other hand, typically modify verbs, adjectives, sentences, and other adverbs.
Adjectives can turn into adverbs by adding “ly” to the end of the adjective, in many cases. We see this in words like “loudly” or “perfectly.” If your adjective ends in “-y,” you can usually still turn it into an adverb. You’ll just add “ily” instead of “ly.” An example of this would be “easily” or “luckily.”
Adverbs are like the “chameleons” of the English language, since their shape and form are constantly changing. Here are the different types of adverbs, and examples of each:
Adverbs of manner tell the reader or listener how something is happening. We often use lots of adverbs of manner in direct conversation, describing action words (or verbs).
Examples of adverbs of manner include:
Adverbs of degree explain the degree of intensity (or extent) to which something is happening. They are commonly seen as single words, and include terms such as:
Adverbs of place tell us where the main topic of conversation happens. They’re commonly seen placed after the main verb or after the main clause, and don’t typically modify adjectives or adverbs.
They can also be used as a part of an adverbial phrase, or a group of words that act as a single adverb. Examples of adverbial phrases using adverbs of place include:
Adverbs of time tell a reader or a writer how long it took for something to happen. They can also explain when and how often the action happened. They can often be used interchangeably or closely with adverbs of frequency, which we explain down below.
Common adverbs of time include:
Adverbs of time are typically placed at the end of sentences as well, or they can be placed at the beginning of a sentence if you want to call more attention to a single aspect of the sentence in question.
The following sentences offer examples of each use case:
You can also use adverbs of time mid-sentence if you plan to use the adverb in formal writing, as you might for a science or history report. An example of this would be:
While adverbs of time are parts of speech that can be used broadly, describing how long it took something to happen or when something happened; adverbs of frequency have a narrower, more exclusive focus — telling how often something happened.
Common adverbs of frequency include:
The following examples show adverbs of frequency in action:
👉 While adverbs of time can also tell how often something happened, they have other functions. Adverbs of frequency exclusively tell us the frequency of events and actions.
Adverbs of purpose are commonly seen in school assignments, as they explain why something is the way that it is. These can be used broadly, modifying adverbs, adjectives, and verbs.
Examples of adverbs of purpose include:
Adverbs can take on a few other roles in the English language. We’ve summarised four additional adverb types below:
Conjunctive adverbs are the glue that combines two clauses together. They do this by smoothing out the jarring gap that would otherwise be there if there were two clauses laid together, separated only by punctuation.
Here’s an example:
Clauses without conjunctive adverbs: I wanted to order coffee. The coffee shop is closed.
Clauses with conjunctive adverbs: I wanted to order coffee; however, the coffee shop is closed.
Above, we can see that conjunctive adverbs make two clauses appear conversational, connecting the flow of ideas easily.
Focusing adverbs do just that — working overtime to call focus to a specific part of a sentence. As such, they’re usually put right next to the area of the sentence that you want to emphasise.
Common focusing adverbs include:
Here are some examples of focusing adverbs in action:
Interrogative adverbs ask questions and prompt for more information. They switch the flow of a typical sentence, putting the verb in front of the subject in most cases. Interrogative adverbs are words that we use every day, including:
We see an example of sentence syntax change with the natural conversational flow and use of these adverbs:
While interrogative adverbs may look the same as relative adverbs, they have two different jobs. Interrogatives interrogate, directly asking questions. Relative adverbs take on the same words (i.e., “where,” “when,” and “why,”) to introduce an adverb clause.
We’ve offered some relative adverb examples below to clarify:
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If you see a word modifying (read: describing) an adjective or verb, you’ve likely found an adverb. They commonly end in “-ly” or “-ily.”
Adjectives primarily modify nouns and pronouns; or people, places, and things. Adverbs provide additional information, describing or “modifying” verbs, adjectives, adverbs, or entire sentences themselves.
Adverbs don’t typically modify nouns or pronouns. Adverbs of degree can be used to modify noun phrases, however.
Now can be an adverb, describing something occurring at the given moment.
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