Common Mistakes with Adjectives and Adverbs

Adjectives

If you’re a native English speaker, you may have noticed that “the big red house” sounds more natural than “the red big house.” The video below explains the order in which adjectives occur in English, using the acronym DOSA-SCOMP. DOSA-SCOMP stands for Determiner Opinion Size Age Shape Color Origin Material and Purpose, and the video defines those concepts:

Practice

Select the adjectives that are in a natural sounding word order for each sentence.

  1. A(n) ________ sports car emerged from the 3D printer in Milne Library.
    1. beautiful, new, Italian
    2. Italian, new, beautiful
    3. Italian, beautiful, new
  2. The town’s  ________ barber pole dates from medieval times.
    1. red and white, striped, big
    2. big, red and white, striped
    3. striped, red and white, big
  3. We put an ________ tree on stage to represent the protagonist’s stunted emotional state.
    1. ugly, tiny, artificial
    2. artificial, ugly, tiny
    3. ugly, artificial, tiny
  4. The architect rendered his futuristic style ironic by living in a ________ house in the Roemer Arboretum.
    1. little, charming, mushroom
    2. mushroom, little, charming
    3. charming, little, mushroom

Adverbs

Only

The word only can mean different things in a sentence, depending on where it’s placed. Let’s look at a simple sentence:

She loves Economics.

Moving only can influence the meaning of this sentence:

  • Only she loves Economics.
    • No one loves Economics but her.
  • She only loves Economics.
    • The one thing she does is love Economics.
  • She loves only Economics.
    • She loves Economics and nothing else.

Only modifies the word that directly follows it. Whenever you use the word only make sure you’ve placed it correctly in your sentence.

Literally

A linguistic phenomenon is sweeping the nation: people are using literally as an intensifier.  Here are a couple of examples: “It was literally the worst thing that has ever happened to me,” or “His head literally exploded when I told him I was going to be late again.” Some people love this phrase while it makes other people want to pull their hair out.

According to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, the actual definition of literal is as follows:

  • involving the ordinary or usual meaning of a word
  • giving the meaning of each individual word
  • completely true and accurate : not exaggerated[1]

According to this definition, literally should be used only when something actually happened (so if his head actually did explode, or it truthfully was the worst thing that ever happened to you). Our cultural usage may be slowly shifting to allow literally as an intensifier, but it’s currently safer to avoid using literally in any way other than its dictionary definition in standardized English writing.

Practice

Which of the following sentences use their adverbs according to the conventions of standard English?

  1. Daveed often takes things too literally.
  2. Tommy literally died when he saw how he did on the midterm.
  3. In their vows, they promised to love only each other.
  4. Ava is literally the best student at Geneseo.

Mistaking Adverbs and Adjectives

One common mistake with adjectives and adverbs is using one in the place of the other. For example:

  • I wish I could dissect the daffodil as neat as Zach can.
    • The word should be neatly, an adverb, since it’s modifying a verb, to dissect.
  • That’s real nice of Adrienne to create the powerpoint.
    • Should be really, an adverb, since it’s modifying an adjective, nice.

Remember, if you’re modifying a noun or pronoun, you should use an adjective. If you’re modifying anything else, you should use an adverb. We switch out adverbs for adjectives often enough in spoken language, but standardized English, which is more formal, is the version preferred for most college-level writing.

First v. Firstly

Some good news: students often worry about the difference between these two in a situation where either of them is actually correct.

First can be an adjective or an adverb and refers to the person or thing that comes before all others in order, time, amount, quality or importance:

  •  The first person to orbit Earth was Yuri A. Gagarin. (adjective)
  • Carrie always arrives first at our Geology lab. (adverb) Not “Carrie always arrives firstly …”

We often use first, especially in writing, to show the order of the points we want to make. When we are making lists, we can use first or firstly. Firstly is more formal than first, but not more correct:

  • First(ly) the sodium chloride is dissolved in the water and heated gently. Second(ly) a dye is added to the solution.

But not: At first, the sodium chloride…

At first means ‘at the beginning’ or ‘in the beginning’ and we use it when we make contrasts:

  • No one in the study group could figure out the algebraic equation at first, but eventually the Math Learning Center tutor provided enough support for them to solve it successfully.

Good v. Well

One of the most commonly confused adjective/adverb pairs is good versus well. Good is an adjective. Well is an adverb. Here are a couple of sentence where people often confuse these two:

  • The experiment runs good now.
  • I’m doing good with this first problem set.

In the first sentence, good is supposed to be modifying runs, a verb; therefore, the use of good—an adjective—isn’t standard. Runs should be modified by an adverb. The standardized sentence would read, “The experiment runs well now.”

In the second sentence, good is supposed to be modifying doing, a verb. Once again, this means that well—an adverb—should be used instead: “I’m doing well with this first problem set.”

Note: The sentence “I’m doing good” can be grammatically correct, but only when it means “I’m doing good things,” rather than when it is describing how a person is feeling.

Practice

Select the correct modifier for each sentence:

  1. Jimmy has to work (real / really) hard to be (successful / successfully).
  2. Kate is really (good / well) with quadratic equations. She computes really (good / well).
  3. Eli reads (quick / quickly), and he retains the information (good / well).

  1. "Literal." Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 20 June 2016. ↵