Adverbs: what are they and how to use them in English?

An adverb of frequency will tell you how often an action takes place. Some common adverbs of frequency are:

Adverbs of frequency usually come before the verb:

A few other notes:

• Some adverbs of frequency (sometimes, often, rarely, usually, frequently, ...) can also come at the beginning or the end of the clause. This is quite common in writing or storytelling.

  • ✅ Often, they watch TV together.
  • ✅ They watch TV together often.

• Occasionally, adverbs of frequency (often, frequently, rarely, sometimes, ...) will be used to modify English gerunds (a verb + -ing that is used like a noun). When this happens, the adverb can come before or after the gerund phrase:

  • Frequently changing your oil will help your car last longer.
  • Changing your oil frequently will help your car last longer.

  Read this story about Mark’s daily routine. Notice the positions of the adverbs and the verbs:

An adverb of time will tell you when something happens. Some very common adverbs of time include:

Adverbs for a specific day or time (today, tonight, yesterday, ...) will usually come before or after the clause.

• ✅ Tomorrow, we are leaving for Brazil.
  
• ✅ We are leaving for Brazil tomorrow.
• ❌ We tomorrow are leaving for Brazil.
• 🆗 We are leaving tomorrow for Brazil.

  This is only allowed if leaving tomorrow is more important than Brazil.

Adverbs for relative times (now, later, before, already, ...) can come before or after the clause or before and after the verb. However, the most common location will depend on the adverb.

• ✅ I’ll watch TV with my family later.
  

  With later, this is most common.
• ✅ Later, I’ll watch TV with my family.
• ✅ I later watched TV with my family.
• 🆗 I’ll watch TV later with my family.

  This is only allowed if with my family is not important.

However, there are some adverbs of time that follow more restrictive rules, like just.

• ✅ I just served pie for dessert.
• ❌ Just, I served pie for dessert
• ❌ I served pie just for dessert.
• ❌ I served pie for dessert just.

Check out this table of adverbs of time for some more detailed rules and examples.

Here is an example of a story that uses adverbs of time:

An adverb of duration will give you an idea of how long an action lasts. Here are some pretty common adverbs of duration:

Adverbs of duration can come before or after a verb.

• Before the verb:

  I had temporarily forgotten his name.
• After the verb:

  I had forgotten his name temporarily.

Adverbs of duration can modify participles and some other adjectives. Remember: When adverbs modify adjectives, they always come directly before the adjective!

• a long forgotten masterpiece
• a briefly open door

Sometimes the participles they modify are part of a complex verb form:

A few adverbs of duration can also be used at the beginning or the end of the clause, but this is uncommon:

• Briefly, I thought about going out for coffee.
• I thought about going out for coffee briefly.

Read this news story for a longer example:

An adverb of manner will let you know how or in what way something is being done. This group of adverbs is extremely large. Most of them end in -ly.

It is usually best to put adverbs of manner after the verb they modify:

• He told his story loudly.
• They walked the dog slowly down the street.

Most adverbs of manner can also come before the verb, before the clause, or after the clause as well, with very little change in meaning:

• They slowly walked the dog down the street.
• Slowly, they walked the dog down the street.
• They walked the dog down the street slowly.

Adverbs of manner can also modify other kinds of words:

• They come before adjectives that come from verbs:

  • a swiftly flowing river

    a river that flows swiftly
  • a beautifully painted vase

    a vase that was painted beautifully

• They come after gerunds (nouns that come from verbs)

  Singing well takes practice.

You can see all of these patterns in the story below:

Adverbs of degree tell you how intensely something is happening. Like adverbs of manner, a lot of these adverbs are -ly words, like:

Their position is easy to remember: adverbs of degree always come before the word or phrase they modify!

• adjective

  There is incredibly strong wind outside!
• adverb

  We ran very quickly.
• prepositional phrase

  Patrick sat right next to me.
• verb

  Meghan really loved her birthday party.

Here’s an ad that uses a lot of adverbs of degree:

Adverbs of place tell you where something happens.

Adverbs of place and direction are also easy! They always come after the word they modify.

• Most often, this is a verb:

  I have lived here for six years.

• Sometimes these adverbs will follow a noun.

  If the noun is a gerund (from a verb) the adverb describes it directly:

  I like staying inside.

  But if the noun is not a gerund, it means that some words have been deleted from an English relative clause, and the adverb actually modifies a deleted verb:

  nounverb

  There is a cat that is upstairs. → There is a cat upstairs.

Adverbs of direction tell you which way something moves or where it’s going. For example:

Adverbs of direction always come after the verb.

• He drove backwards.
• They carried the bricks inside.
• We walked over to the store.

They also come after gerunds.

A couple of interesting points:

• Most adverbs of place are also adverbs of direction. When an adverb of place is used as an adverb of direction, it means “to that location.”

  • I stood here = at this place

    adverb of place
  • I walked here = to this place

    adverb of direction
  • I stood somewhere = at that place

    adverb of place
  • I walked somewhere = to that place

    adverb of direction

• We often use adverbs of place between the verb and a prepositional phrase of place to create more detailed descriptions:

  We walked up to the counter.