Jennie Day
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Jennie Day Blog

Everything I Need to Know about Adverbs I Learned from Watching Movies

August 2, 2013 By jennie

Daniel Handler (better known by his nom de plume Lemony Snickett) wrote a book of short stories called Adverbs, which I read circa 2008 as a student of creative writing. I was into adverbs at the time. I thought they made me sound smart.

I was also into Films Noir, which led me to the 2005 Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang. It’s a Val Kilmer/Robert Downey, Jr. movie which was kind of meant to relaunch their respective careers post-Batman/rehab.

So picture 21-year-old me, sitting in my apartment with the lights all the way up, when we come to this scene: (uh, swear words ahead)

(If you don’t want to watch, here’s the gist of the dialogue)
Harry (Robert Downey, Jr.): Umm, clearly I’m interrupting. I feel badly.
Harmony (Michelle Monaghan): Bad. You feel bad.
Harry: Bad?
Harmony: Badly is an adverb. So to say you feel badly would be saying that the mechanism which allows you to feel is broken.

And I realized that I’d been using adverbs wrong my whole life. A life changing moment, I think you’ll agree.

So here is a little grammar lesson. When you want to use an adverb, first make sure you don’t sound like a dunce. Try twisting the sentence around like so:

“I need to go to the bathroom so badly.”

“I am bad at needing to go to the bathroom.”

WRONG.

“Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”

“To be frank, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”

Correct.

Filed Under: Movies

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