Adverbs of Manner

Adverbs of manner

Adjectives vs adverbs of manner

adverbs manner vs adjectives

Adverbs of manner – use

We use adverbs of manner after a verb to describe the verb. We use an adverb of manner to say how something happens or how we do something.

It rained heavily. (=We are describing how it rained.)
He always replies quickly. (=We are describing how he replies)

Adverbs of manner – position

We use adverbs of manner after the verb or, if there is an object, after verb + object.

He drives carefully.
She plays the guitar well.

Very, really, quite

We can use very, really, quite before an adverb of manner.

It rained quite heavily.
He drives quite carefully.
She plays the guitar really well.

Adjectives

We use adjectives before a noun or after the verb be. You can review the topic of adjectives here.

This is an expensive guitar.
This guitar is expensive.

Adverbs of manner vs adjectives

Difference

We use adjectives to describe a noun (before a noun or after the verb be), and we use adverbs of manner to describe a verb (after the verb or verb + object). Compare:

Robert plays the guitar well. (=We are describing the verb, i.e. how Robert plays the guitar.)
Robert is a good guitar player. (=We are describing the noun, Robert.)
Sara eats slowly.
Sara is a slow eater.

Adjectives ending in -ly

Some words end in -ly, but they are adjectives, NOT adverbs: friendly, lovely, silly. We CANNOT transform these adjectives into adverbs of manner.