For Writers Only

It’s really getting under my skin to come across repeatedly one particular grammatical error (in addition to those mistakes with lie, lay, rise, raise, sit, and set). It’s the misuse of the word “silently” when it should be “silent.” Last night I found it twice in just a few pages of Moscow Rules, an exciting international intrigue novel by Daniel Silva, author of The Rembrandt Affair. I thoroughly enjoy his work, but he doesn’t know me, and is not likely to read this criticism from me. Maybe one of you will tell him. But hear this:

Many authors write (and publishers publish) “He stood silently.” Yes, we once learned that adverbs tell how. But so do adjectives. Adverbs tell how something does; adjectives tell how something is. There is no action in “He stood silently.” It should be, “He stood silent.” It’s like “Stand straight.” We don’t say, “Stand straightly.” Nor do we say, “Stand tally,” but “Stand tall.” Many other such verbs with adjectives make up this list; for example, “Drop dead.” That’s a sort of action, but what this means is “Drop to be dead.” If the construction can be expressed with a form of to be, rather than the verb given, as in “He was silent,” then it needs the adjective, not an adverb.

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