Detect -ly adverbs in your text and compute the adverb rate. Pinpoint the sentences with the heaviest adverb load and edit toward leaner prose.
Built and maintained by Paul Clark, Redmoon Software · Changes and corrections
Use the adverb detector when editing fiction, marketing copy, or any writing where pace and vividness matter. Hemingway-style guidance targets adverb rates under 4%; tight ad copy often goes below 2%.
Adverb detection is a stylistic metric, like passive voice — it surfaces patterns rather than scoring difficulty. Use alongside the Filler-Word Detector for a fuller weak-prose audit.
The detector flags every -ly word in the text, excluding a stoplist of -ly words that aren't adverbs (family, lovely, jelly, etc.).
Adverb rate is the percentage of words that are adverbs. Hemingway-style writing keeps the rate below 4%; tight ad copy often stays under 2%.
Strict mode also skips -ly words whose stem is shorter than three letters (such as "only" and "rely"); it does not check the stem against a dictionary.
Stephen King's rule: "The road to hell is paved with adverbs." They're a sign you chose a weak verb that needed propping up. "Ran quickly" → "sprinted".
Family, lovely, jelly, etc. — these are excluded from the count. Strict mode also drops -ly words with a stem under three letters, such as "only" and "rely"; it does not check against a dictionary of adjectives.
Under 4% for tight prose. Under 2% for ad copy. Some genres (literary fiction) tolerate higher rates by design.
Input
"She quickly opened the door and softly whispered her name."
Output
2 adverbs in 10 words (20% adverb rate) — heavy.
"Quickly" and "softly" both weaken stronger verb choices. "She flung the door open and whispered her name" reads tighter and more vivid.
Adverbs are found by looking for words ending in "-ly" that are longer than three characters and are not on an exclusion list. That list exists because "-ly" is not a reliable adverb marker in English: "family", "supply", "reply", "early" and "jelly" all end in it without being adverbs. The list is short, so adjectives such as "friendly", "costly" and "likely" are still counted.
Strict mode adds one more rule: the part before "-ly" must be at least three letters long. That drops short words such as "only", "duly", "idly" and "rely" and nothing else; it does not check the stem against a dictionary of adjectives. The two modes usually differ by very little, so use the same one whenever you compare drafts.
The useful ones to cut are the intensifiers propping up a weak verb: "walked slowly" wants "ambled", "said loudly" wants "shouted", "very quickly" wants "instantly". Replacing the pair with one precise verb is almost always an improvement, and that is the edit the tool is really pointing at.
The ones to keep are adverbs carrying information the verb cannot: "she deliberately misread it" means something different without "deliberately", and no verb replaces it. Sentence adverbs — "however", "consequently", "arguably" — are structural signposts and cutting them damages the argument.
A high count is a prompt to look, not a fault to fix. Fiction runs higher than technical writing and that is a genre difference, not a defect.
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