

Trump's fired! ... when it comes to adverbs

Before we were debating whether Donald Trump qualifies as a small business, we were debating whether he knows his adverbs.

He doesn't.

Know his adverbs, that is. (We're not going to pretend to understand tax laws enough to weigh in on the small business question raised by President Obama in last week's debate.)

Trump caught some grammarian flack during his "Celebrity Apprentice" days for correcting pop singer Cyndi Lauper's adverb use.

Trump: "Who should I fire? Why don't you just say Maria?"

Lauper: "Because I feel bad!"

Trump: "Badly. You feel badly."

Actually, she feels bad. But Trump is hardly the only person with adverb issues.

Words Work reader and Zion, Ill., resident Suzann Denlinger wrote us recently looking for some "ly" clarity.

"How about a column on how Midwesterners drop the -ly on adverbs all the time?" Denlinger wrote. "I never noticed this issue until college, when a friend of mine from the southern states made a comment about how we dropped the -ly all the time."

"She is playing the piano very loud," Denlinger offered as an example. "He walks very slow."

Let's start by defining adverbs. While adjectives describe nouns or pronouns (a sunny day, a blue dress), adverbs modify verbs, adjectives and other adverbs.

"If an adverb answers 'how' and can have an -ly attached to it, place it there," says, the online companion to Jane Straus' "The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation."

The site offers a helpful primer on when—and when not— to add -ly. Some highlights:

• "She thinks slowly. (Slowly answers how she thinks.)"

• "We performed badly. (Badly answers how we performed.)"

• "She thinks fast. (Even though fast answers how she thinks, there is no such word as fastly.)"

There is one caveat, however. And this is where Trump tripped.

"If the verb is one of four senses—taste, smell, look, feel—don't ask how. Instead, ask if the sense verb is used actively. If so, attach the -ly. If the sense verb is not used actively, which is more common, don't attach -ly."

• "Roses smell sweet. (Do roses actively smell with noses? No, so no -ly.)"

• "The woman looked angry. (Is the woman actively looking with eyes? No, only her appearance is being described. No -ly)"

• "She feels bad about the news. (She is not feeling with fingers so no -ly.)"

• "She feels badly since burning her fingers. (She is feeling with her fingers so the word is being used actively; therefore, add the -ly.)"

Here's hoping Lauper tracks down a copy of "The Blue Book" and overnights it Trump. We'd feel bad if he never learned that particular lesson in adverb usage—not to mention humility.

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