Last night reading “The God Delusion” and the author used the word pairing “brutally raped”. The word rape is a verb – an action. The word brutally is an adverb – it describes a quality of the verb … and therein begin the crimes of the adverb.
Is there another way to be raped? What is the difference between brutally raped and raped? Is it possible to be gently raped?
By adding a quality to the verb we open up all kinds of absurd ideas like the one above. Unfortunately we do have degrees of rape and it all comes down to the details, as the law shows us by enforcing different sentences based on how the rape was conducted.
Some verbs have many adverbs that pair with them. For example, drink. You can drink slow, fast, quietly, loudly, boorishly and so on. In each case here there is a better word to replace each of these word pairing terms. You might use sip, gulp and quaff for example.
But for a word pairing like brutally raped there isn’t a replacement word. Could you use violated? No, because it doesn’t mean the same thing.
Common words often have a variety of replacement words to replace awkward word pairings. Run, bolt, skitter, trot, jog, gallop, dawdle -> all replacement words for walked quickly, walked slowly, etc.
So what is wrong with the word pairing brutally raped? The problem is when it is overused then people switch off when they read it. People have an automatic system that greys out the colour and vitality of words pairings heard or read too many times.
Words have an incredible power to shape our perceptions and our actions. Could you imagine if instead of twenty-seven civilian casualties the newsreader said twenty-seven innocent people were brutally murdered by the US military today. By consistently pairing brutally with raped, writers are trying to add an extreme edge to an already extreme action. Rather than increasing the power and shock of that word it, in fact, dilutes any power it has.
(And the side note: is there a way to be murdered that isn’t brutal? Yes, there is.)
A senseless bashing. Is there a bashing that makes sense? Mindless rage. Is there rage that is mindful?
Adverbs do have their place in writing. Walked slowly is different to dawdled. Dawdled carries tones of procrastination and deliberate delay. Walked slowly is free of those tones. For example, if someone just heard a loved one had died you could write “He walked slowly across the grass and sat down on the blue chair” but perhaps not “He dawdled across the grass and sat down on the blue chair”.
Most adverbs can be identified by their -ly ending. Quickly, quietly, stupidly, moronically, retardedly, slowly, etc.
But the best way to identify them is to first work out which word is the verb. It is the action of the sentence. There could be more than one of them. Then look for the word that answers the question “How or in which way is [verb] happening?” Once you’ve identified the word pairing, try to see if you can replace it with a single word.
“They quickly bounced from one side of the room to the other.”
Verb: bounced.
How or in what way is [bounced] happening?
Quickly.
Replacements? How about careened? Does it mean the same as quickly bounced? Is bounced strong enough by itself that quickly could be removed from the sentence?
“They bounced from one side of the room to the other.”
“They quickly bounced from one side of the room to the other.”
“They bounced around the room.”
“They bounced around the room, smashing furniture, kicking walls, splashing paint; it was a destructathon of epic scale.”
“They bounced around the room, kids possessed with the spirit of rubber balls.”
Anyways, one of the ways to make your writing better is to find adverbs and see if you can eliminate them.