Award-winning sportswriter Rick Reilly hates adverbs. "I would rather be coated in chicken drippings and dropped in a leopard den than use adverbs," he writes in the forward to the 2002 edition of The Best American Sports Writing. "If you can't find a better way to say 'hungrily' or proudly,' you need to find a new line of work, preferably nowhere near words."
Kansas City Star columnist Jason Whitlock disagrees with Reilly. Or he's not aware of adverbs' reputations as "crashers in the syntax house party," in the words of editor Constance Hale. Whitlock loves him some adverbs. They laze about his columns like tired dogs.
Here is an alphabetical list of the "-ly" words to appear in six recent Whitlock columns:
Actually
Arguably
Basically
Collectively
Completely
Equally
Eventually
Exactly
Extremely
Fairly
Financially
Friendly
Fully
Generally
Highly
Honestly
Inappropriately
Initially
Justifiably
Likely
Nearly
Numbingly
Particularly
Pathetically
Politely
Poorly
Potentially
Previously
Primarily
Probably
Properly
Really
Regularly
Reluctantly
Secretly
Seriously
Significantly
Simply
Spontaneously
Truly
Ultimately
Unknowingly
Vastly
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