Adjectives do not qualify verbs, use adverbs instead
In English, adverbs are easy to recognise because most of them end with the letters ly. FILE PHOTO
What you need to know:
- Strictly speaking, however, though, as a thought, it is possible to roam free, in good language, you do not roam free.
Journalism competes with reptiles among the most dedicated killers, Kenya’s journalism as a killer of language.
The importance of a good headline is that it summarises journalism’s alleged stock-in-trade, namely, information.
As a rule, a headline’s meaning should appear to the reader with one sweep of the eye.
I culled the following headline from the Wednesday Nation: “Death stalks Kerio Valley”. First, I thought that human beings were the victims.
Moreover, the sub-editors were so proud of the headline that they ordered it printed not only as a page one pointer but also in colour (red and blue).
You could not miss them because they were placed squarely above the masthead.
VERBS
Under one, we were offered these mouth-watering words: “in the depths of this wilderness, bandits roam free”.
Yet that was exactly where I parted company with the sub-editors. For, although to roam free is a common thought, grammar should oblige you to use an adverb to describe a verb.
Strictly speaking, you should either roam freely or roam into freedom.
For, the adjective “free” can qualify only a noun, not a verb. And an adverb is what you need in such a construction.
Surely, you can either roam freely or roam into freedom.
Though constructions like to roam free have become common among peoples for whom English is the mother tongue, in grammar, you cannot roam free because roam is a verb and, in English, verbs are qualified, not by adjectives, but by adverbs.
GRAMMAR
To reiterate, the word free is an adjective, whereas what you need there is an adverb, the adverb freely.
Strictly speaking, however, though, as a thought, it is possible to roam free, in good language, you do not roam free.
As far as language is concerned,, even if you are Ivanhoe in Torquilstone forest, you can only roam freely.
In other words, though to roam free seems to be rising from the hoi polloi to become common among England’s aristocracy, it is not proper language.
Strictly speaking, you can only roam freely, namely, only adverbially for, in English grammar, adverbs, not adjectives, are what perform the task of describing a verb or qualifying a verbal action.
EXAMPLES
In other words, what the verb to roam desperately needs is not an adjective but the adverb freely.
Yet, in our example, it was not until the turn headline, furlongs away on page 10, that the reader was offered the vital information that, in that, there, “bandits roam free”. Yet free is an adjective and cannot serve adverbially..
Of the words available to you in that context, only if you convert the adjective free into freely will it perform an adverbial task.
In English, adverbs are easy to recognise because most of them end with the letters ly.
I say “most” because a number of English adverbs do not obey that rule.
And many adjectives, including curmudgeonly also end with an ly.
Moreover certain adverbs, including often, do not end with an ly. For instance, there is no such English word as oftenly.
