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Every casual writer has heard the advice about avoiding -ly adverbs. The argument comes down to the proverbial rule: “show, don’t tell.” Instead of telling that a character said something sadly, show what they did to portray that they felt sad. Since I had heard about the caution against -ly adverbs, it was interesting to see evidence potentially backing up the rule in Nabokov’s Favorite Word is Mauve: What the Numbers Reveal About the Classics, Bestsellers, and Our Own Writing.
Blatt measures the use of -ly adverbs in what he determines the literary community considers to be “great books.” He then finds a pretty decent correlation between the lack of adverbs and an author’s more praised works. While his research is very compelling, it raises a lot of questions for me. Most of the books mentioned are at least fifty years old, some even dating back to the 1800s. Do bestselling authors today still avoid -ly adverbs?
Blatt somewhat addresses this question with his study of fan fiction. He compares popular fan fiction to prized books from the 2000s. He found, “The 300-plus megahits in the bestseller category averaged just 115 -ly adverbs per 10,000 words. And the 100 award winners have a median of 114 -ly adverbs.” These rates are still 50% higher than some of Hemingway’s more critically acclaimed works. Is this the new standard for the right number of adverbs? What has changed in English writing over the past decades to bring about this transformation?
I’m not sure if my questions can be answered, but it’s interesting to think about.
