Should we brazenly ditch the adverb? For those who spotted the nerdy linguistic pun in that question, my bias may be already abundantly clear.

But maybe I’m wrong. Plenty of writers offer lexical advice - both solicited and not. The adverb gets people weirdly fired up; many are less fond of it than me. I spent recent months devouring writing about writing as I complete the first draft of my first novel, so the recurring themes are fresh in my sun-kissed skull.

I’m not the only one. The internet lit up when in November Jonathan Franzen wrote 10 “rules for novelists”. His pompous, random rules were widely – and deservedly – lampooned. They reek of superciliousness. Number eight, for example, is: “Interesting verbs are seldom very interesting.” Which would make adverbs yet more essential; if “plodding” is uninteresting, then the “slowly” of “walked slowly” becomes crucial.

It’s always worth re-evaluating the language we use to describe our world. The exhilarating thing about linguistics to any word-lover is the pace at which it reinvents itself: even faster than Madonna in the 90s. Australian journalist Tiger Webb recently wrote an entire piece advocating the abolition of the apostrophe, in which it was characterised as “the hoity toity squiggle”.

After an intense stint of reading about writing, the chorus calling for a ban – or at the very least, a vast reduction of usage of the words to qualify verbs or adjectives – now feels too loud to ignore.

Stephen King leads the charge for the abolition. “The road to hell is paved with adverbs,” he writes in 2000’s On Writing “and I will shout it from the rooftops.” Note he won’t shout loudly – that’s known as a pleonasm, when more words than necessary are used. It’s the chief criticism of the adverb: stripping interesting verbs like “shout” of their punch. The tautology can come across as immature.

Sparing but powerful usage is surely the only way forward

When it comes to “good” writing, two texts are referred to with such reverence, they’ve become bibles for those whose industry is the word: The Elements of Style by William Strunk and EB White, and Politics and the English Language by George Orwell. One of Orwell’s six rules for writing with clarity is: “If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.” Meanwhile, Strunk and White instruct with appropriate concision: “Omit needless words.”

“Many adverbs are needless,” says Nick Enfield, professor of linguistics at Sydney University. “I often write ‘very’ in draft, but then always remove it. Then again, we sometimes need adverbs, they do a lot of useful things. And recall the last of George Orwell’s famous six rules: ‘Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.’ (Note the adverbial use of ‘outright’!)”

Adverbs give helpful extra information. As Donald Trump attests, they’re excellent for hyperbole. Anyone who experienced Sydney’s 2019 summer heatwave knows that “hot” or even the superlative “boiling” doesn’t quite capture it. We must bring out the big guns: the quintessential Australian adverb combined with alliteration is the only satisfactorily accurate descriptor: it was bloody boiling.

This obsession with being vigorously economical is a utilitarian approach to language; when coming from a journalist, that’s understandable. Last year, ABC journalist Sarah Ferguson said of a Four Corners episode about the ABC’s own senior management challenges: “I shouldn’t use adverbs because they’re bad for the language, but it’s extremely fair.”

But we look to novelists, do we not, to provide a beat; a pause to reflect on what it means to be human. Rather than fixating on pace and purpose, they provide us with depth. They take an English-lover’s approach to language, rather than a mathematician’s.

That said, it’s amusing to see which phrases are superfluous. “What is the adverbial phrase ‘of course’ but a smug duo dropped in to congratulate writer and reader for already agreeing with each other,” writes Christian Lorentzen for Vulture, joining King’s abolition crusade.

I’ve decided not to join them, and the person who ultimately persuaded me was my creative writer teacher, novelist Kate Forsyth.

“Adverbs are an essential part of a writer’s toolbox” she says. “Used judiciously, they add emotional depth and create clarity. Think of them as emojis: helping the recipient understand the emotional tone. They can also bring rhythm and texture to a sentence. Bare isn’t always best.”

She cites the Emily Dickinson poem: “Because I could not stop for death, he kindly stopped for me.” The adverb “kindly”, Forsyth says, is “crucial – the whole meaning hangs upon it”.

Sparing but powerful usage is surely the only way forward. For, if we followed the advice of those utilitarian and economic linguists, we’d be deprived of one of Australia’s best political put downs. In response to John Hewson asking why he won’t call an early election, Paul Keating said: “The answer is, mate, because I want to do you slowly.”

Keating was right. There has to be a bit of sport in this for all of us.