Adverb groups

Where in a sentence can adverbs appear?

As a rule of thumb, we tend to put adverbs close to the main verb they are describing or modifying.

But really they can turn up almost anywhere.

Often you'll find you can change their position in a sentence with almost no impact on the meaning. That said, moving adverbs past certain points in a sentence will change the meaning completely, or break the sentence altogether.

Try this

Let's have a play around with one of the first snippets we looked at.

Read each of the snippets below, slowly, and think carefully about what each sentence really means.

Right now the adverb is in the middle of a verb group.

What happens if we move the adverb one step to the left, in front of the secondary verb 'trying'?

It doesn't change much at all because in both cases, we've kept the word 'desperately' close to the verb 'trying'. What if we move it one step again, in front of the tense helper, 'was'?

Again, there's not much change because the adverb is still attached to the same verb group. You can see that as long as the adverb is connected to the same verb group, then shifting the adverb doesn't change the meaning, although it does change some of the rhythm, emphasis and flavour of the phrase.

What if we move it even further?

Notice how the meaning changes? With this move, the snippet is describing the quality of Mrs Fox knowing instead of the quality of Mr Fox trying to think.

Why has that change happened? Well, there is more than one verb group in this sentence, and now our adverb is closer to the verb group 'knew' than it is to the verb group 'was trying to think'.

Let's move it one more time. What does the adverb describe in this version?

The adverb is back to describing the quality of Mr Fox's thinking. (Which makes sense; it's closer to the verb group 'was trying to think'.)

So the sentence means the same as the original.

But does it sound the same? Not exactly.

Try reading all the snippets above again. You'll notice that even though the meaning is often unaffected, the emphasis changes based on which words the adverb is next to, or whether it is the first or last word in the sentence (since first and last words naturally get more emphasis).