Academic writing favors some adverbs over others. This article discusses the adverb dos and don’ts in academic prose; it demonstrates how adverbs can be used inconspicuously to help guide readers through your narrative.
First:
use adverbs only where necessary.
Treat this guiding principle as law when writing academic prose in English.
That said, my adverb dos and don’ts are:
- Do: structure information.
Adverbs make great points of reference. Use conjunctive adverbs at the beginning of sentences to guide your readers. Connect ideas in a logical sequence to deliver your message. Pick your favorite conjunctive adverbs and use them regularly—they will become indispensable. - Don’t: convey degree/frequency/manner/preference.
For degree and frequency, use numbers from your data. Absent these use words other than adverbs. For manner, use words other than adverbs. For preference, use words other than adverbs to state the objective reasons. Subjective/personal preferences are for interviews—not for research articles. - Do: describe time/space.
Use adverbs as reference points for describing settings or events in time/space. Sequences are the best examples. - Don’t: justify ideas.
Persuasion should come from how ideas are linked together to deliver a message—not from isolated adverbial superlatives. - Do: make exceptions.
In some situations, a single adverb brings instant clarification to the narrative without the clutter that comes with adjectives, nouns, and verbs. In such cases, do break the rules above.
What Happens When There Are Too Many Adverbs?
Consider this example (Thompson, 1997):
①The most widely used method in molecular biology to align sets of nucleotide or amino acid sequences, is to build up a multiple alignment progressively (1-2). ②The most closely related groups of sequences are aligned first and then these groups are gradually aligned together, keeping the early alignments fixed. ③This approach works well when the sequences are sufficiently closely related. ④However, a globally optimal solution (or a biologically significant one) cannot be guaranteed. ⑤In more difficult cases, where many sequences have <30% residue identity, this automatic method becomes less reliable. ⑥Any misaligned regions introduced in previous stages of the progressive alignment are not corrected later as new information from other sequences is added. ⑦ In such cases, the automatic alignments need to be refined, either manually or automatically.
Here, all these ideas and sentences sound disconnected, except for ③ and ④, which are connected by “However,” the only conjunctive adverb of the paragraph.
The adverb dos in ②and ⑥ describe the progressive (i.e., sequential) aspects that define the multiple sequence alignment method, central to this article. This is a hint that they should be combined.
All other adverbs are adverb don’ts either justifying the idea of the sentence, or conveying extent/manner.
The above three points make the paragraph difficult to read. Readers are bombarded with adverbs, but are given no direction to follow—just disjointed statements each seemingly as important as the next.
Rewriting According to the Adverb Dos and Don’ts
From the green highlights in the original paragraph, it becomes clear that:
- ① introduces progressive multiple sequence alignment as the main technique of interest,
- ②, ③, ④, and ⑥ state the problem inherent to the progressive method, and
- ⑤ and ⑦ formulate what the solution needs to be.
To rewrite, I combine the ideas as above and get rid of all extent/manner and justification adverbs.
I use the adverbs “first,” “most,” “before,” and “less” to describe the sequential aspects of that define the progressive method; I use “also” to state the inherent problem that comes with these aspects.
I use the conjunctive adverbs “however” and “therefore” to connect the new sentences to guide readers.
Doing so I get:
①The progressive method is a popular approach to multiple sequence alignment (MSA) of biomolecular structures (1-2). ②③However, because this method generates MSA by first aligning the most related sequences before adding less related ones in succession, ④⑥it also propagates alignment errors made at any stage throughout the process. ⑦Therefore, optimal progressive MSA of real biological sequences (⑤often with < 30 % residue identity) requires the ability to correct for any misalignment.
Takeaways from the Rewrite
The right adverbs used for the right job are inconspicuous. Adverb dos lead readers to a conclusion. When used this way, the dos are hardly noticeable. Adverb don’ts isolate individual sentence ideas from the rest of the text. This makes adverb don’ts unsuitable for academic prose, where readers are not looking for a list of isolated ideas, but for the overall message that transpires from them.
Adverbs modify three types of grammatical entities:
- verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs,
- determiners and prepositions,
- clauses and sentences.
In general, type 1 modifications convey degree/frequency/manner/preference; type 2 help describe space/time; and type 3 connect sentences.
Adverbs are good at adding parenthetical details. The adverb “often” in the last sentence of the rewrite is an example of the exception dos. In this case, the adverb neatly inserts the relevant detail about low residue-identity percentage, which would require many more words to achieve using adjectives, nouns , and verbs (see ⑤ in original).
Adverb Practical Advice
Don’t modify verbs. Either pick the verb with the exact meaning, or replace the verb with the corresponding noun (e.g., “Progressive method” instead of “building up (…) progressively”).
Don’t modify adjectives or other adverbs. If you need to modify a noun with an adjective that needs to be modified by an adverb that needs to be modified by another adverb, you have picked the wrong words (e.g., “most closely related groups” in ②). Rewrite the sentence.
Don’t highlight the importance of individual sentences. In my opinion, this is what went wrong with the original paragraph above; the authors listed their ideas, and used the wrong kind of adverbs to highlight the key points of each sentence. Use conjunctive adverbs instead.
Conclusions
When writing academic prose, use adverbs that connect clauses and sentences; avoid adverbs that convey degree/frequency/manner/preference. Practice using the former when writing Introduction sections. With adverbs, knowing the right tools to use for the right job is essential.
Works Consulted
Thompson, J. D., et al. “The CLUSTAL_X windows interface: Flexible Strategies for Multiple Sequence Alignment Aided by Quality Analysis Tools.” Nucleic Acids Research, vol. 25, no. 24, 1996, 4876–82.