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Adverbs

Adverbs are more flexible than adjectives because they can be used to add extra information about more types of words - verbs, adjectives, other adverbs and clauses.

Here’s the simplest sort of form you’ll find an adverb in:

Adverbs

In this sentence, the adverb ‘quickly’ is telling us extra information about the verb ‘ran’. How did the dinosaur run? It ran ‘quickly’. The adverb is also fairly easy to pick out because it’s right next to the verb it’s describing.

Now, it’s not always this simple to pick out the adverb and also to work out what it’s telling you extra information about in a sentence. A lot of adverbs end in ‘ly’, which makes them easy to pick out, but not all of them do. For instance:

He ran well.

He finished last.

Also, words ending in ‘ly’ aren’t guaranteed to be adverbs; there are some adjectives that end in ‘ly’ as well:

People who are lonely need company.

Lonely is an adjective, not an adverb.