I was one of those individuals who would adamantly protest against the call to “lose” adverbs in any given English sentence. For in my poetry, I bend what I consider to be the rigid language rules to leave room for creativity. Besides, “poetic license” is a right too precious to abandon . . . Even as a novice writer of prose however, I had for long accepted the fact that adverbs, AKA the “-ly”-words, add only weakness to our (written or spoken) expression. They become excessive due to their lack of descriptiveness. We have an example right here in my text: “[. . .] who would adamantly protest [. . .]”. Now that you know what to improve upon, please go ahead and replace the notorious “-ly”-word with an alternative. There are a few options to lend the infected (!) sentence succinctness. Bear in mind: The key is to provide it with a descriptive. Or better yet, to replace the existing verb + adverb team with its more persuasive counterpart(s).

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