EnglishFIX - #1 Adjectives vs Adverbs

Grammar - Fun and easy to understand - Increasing the quality of your posts

A short introduction

One of the biggest challenges I face here on Steemit is that my English does not sound as perfect as that of a native speaker. On the other hand, the first time I read others posts, I start to notice their mistakes. On other platforms, imperfect grammar just puts me off instantly and I lose trust in the content I'm reading. Here, I acknowledge the fact that people from all over the world are speaking their minds using the level of language they've got, so I've decided for myself that I'm not going to stumble in that but be open towards every message, appreciate any effort and reward those I like by voting them.

This time I am here to help the ones who need improvement with their English and I'm going to post fun and easy to understand posts as often as I can. I will focus on different topics, such as the most common grammatical errors people make.

I know many of you don't like sticking to the rules so that's why I'll be trying to explain them in very practical ways using images, short videos, and gifs to make it fun.

#1 Adjectives vs Adverbs

We're going to take a look this time at the difference between ADJECTIVES and ADVERBS and the confusion that you might make when using them.

First of all:

ADJECTIVE	EXAMPLE
a word that describes a noun (person, thing, place, concept etc)	Source The adjective natural describes the noun causes

ADVERB	EXAMPLE
a word that describes a verb	Source the adverb naturally describes the verb comes
a word that describes an adjective	Source the adverb naturally describes the adjective stupid
a word that describes another adverb	Source the adverb really describes the adverb ridiculously
a word that describes a whole sentence	Source the adverb hopefully describes the whole sentence

As you've already noticed, most adverbs end in -ly so in order to transform an adjective into an adverb the general rule for forming adverbs is to add the termination “-ly” to the adjective:
quick → quickly
honest → honestly

But:

For adjectives that end in “-y”, the “y” becomes an “i”. The termination becomes “-ily.”:
easy → easily
happy → happily
For adjectives which end in “-ic”, the termination changes to “-ically”:
automatic → automatically
tragic → tragically
For adjectives that end in “-le”, the “e” is dropped and the termination “-ly” is added:
terrible → terribly
incredible → incredibly
Source

Irregulars

Source

good is an adjective
well is an adverb
For example we don't say: She sings good. but She sings well. (well is describing the singing). You can also say: She is good at singing (good is describing her ability to sing).

Adverbs that keep the same form as the adjectives	Adjectives that look like adverbs but they're not (not all of the words ending in -ly are adverbs)
fast	ugly
hard	manly
early	lonely
late	lovely
high	silly
low	friendly
right	holy
wrong	smelly
straight	chilly
long	heavenly
daily/weekly/yearly	costly

Exceptions

There are times when verbs are described by adjectives and not by adverbs.
Let's see some examples:

Source

It's the case where the verbs don't express action but a state of being. They are called LINKING VERBS.
Other examples of linking verbs: to be, to look, to seem, to smell, to sound, to feel, appear etc.
So we don't say: They seem nicely. or You look wonderfully!
but They seem nice. and You look wonderful!