I found this fairly awkward to read. Possibly that was the point, in which case it was well made. Otherwise, I would consider the author to be demonstrably unqualified to offer advice on writing style.
I'm re-reading Stephen King's "On Writing" right now and he dedicates some of the initial portions of his advice section to anti-adverb rants. "The adverb is not your friend." I catch myself using them more often than I should. His take is that the context around whatever statement you've inserted an adverb into should already tell the story that adverb was inserted to tell.
This was a difficult article to read, but I hope we don't lose the adverb.
I hope we don't lose prepositions either but I have noticed a point of divergence between British and American English relating to this.
In American English it's common to say a couple weeks ago. In British English you would say: a couple of weeks ago.
Or someone in the US might say write me, whereas in the UK you'd say write to me. I think this is a recent change in American English? Or am I completely wrong and this has always been part of American English?
My instinct is those are relatively recent, say in the last fifty years or so - but it's worth pointing out that no speaker of American English would be confused by "a couple of weeks ago". A counter example could be the way British English elides the definite article, like "when I was in university" or "she was in hospital for a month", which sounds strangely clipped to speakers of American English.
"to" just doesn't make much sense. In a geometric sense, the writing isn't directed, the sending is. The writing is adressed, sure but towards doesn't fit, while it's correct to just adress someone. Just sending someone would be different. With writing, it's underspecified, because there is no "writing someone [down]" :)
In german, write me and write to me also work both, but these are the different grammatical cases dativ and akusativ. There are only four and I'm guessing here. They require the different forms "mir" or "[an] mich". These cases are called the same in english, correct me if I'm wrong.
There's nothing inherently wrong with adverbs. They're just a tool.
Like all tools, they can certainly be misused and inappropriately applied by people who don't know how or when to use them. That doesn't mean they're a bad tool.
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[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 32.0 ms ] threadFixed, because your comment on quality does not convince me with its quality.
edit: See how that slightly changed the meaning to be more clear, but perhaps not what you meant? And awkward looks arkward.
I hope we don't lose prepositions either but I have noticed a point of divergence between British and American English relating to this.
In American English it's common to say a couple weeks ago. In British English you would say: a couple of weeks ago.
Or someone in the US might say write me, whereas in the UK you'd say write to me. I think this is a recent change in American English? Or am I completely wrong and this has always been part of American English?
/eɪ kʌ.pl̩ ʌ wiks ʌ.go/
And yes, "ou", "o" and "a" all render to /ʌ/ in my dialect. Yay English!
In german, write me and write to me also work both, but these are the different grammatical cases dativ and akusativ. There are only four and I'm guessing here. They require the different forms "mir" or "[an] mich". These cases are called the same in english, correct me if I'm wrong.
Like all tools, they can certainly be misused and inappropriately applied by people who don't know how or when to use them. That doesn't mean they're a bad tool.