Aspiring science-fiction authors receive one piece of advice above all others: Forsake the adverb, the killer of prose. It’s terribly, awfully, horrendously important. But why? Really, adverbs aren’t ...

“The adverb is not your friend,” says Stephen King in On Writing. In fact, he says, “I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs, and I will shout it from the rooftops.” Well, I wouldn’t go that ...