Notes on the spelling and form of '-ly' adverbs

1 Most adverbs of manner are formed by adding -ly to adjectives, e.g mad/madly, plain/plainly, sudden/suddenly. This applies to adjectives ending in -/ so that the / is doubled: beautiful/beautifully, musical/musically. But note: full/fully

2 -y after a consonant becomes-//y. e.g. busy/busily, funny/funnily. Sometimes two formations are possible, e g dry/drily/dryly, but in e.g sly/slyly, -yly is the acceptable form

3 Delete -e and add -(l)y if an adjective ends in -te- e g. able/ably, nimble/nimbly, possible/possibly, whole/wholly Other adjectives ending in -e retain the -e when adding -ly: extreme/extremely, tame/tamely. Exceptions: due/duly and true/truly.

4 Adjectives ending in -ic take -ally: e g basic/basically, systematic/systematically Common exception: public/publicly

Some -ly adverbs (relating to manner/frequency) have the same form as adjectives: e.g. daily, weekly monthly, quarterly, yearly

I receive quarterly bills I pay my bills quarterly Early can be used as an adjective or an adverb, but unlike e g week/weekly is not formed from another word

/ hope to catch an early train I want to arrive early

Suffixes other than -ly' used to form adverbs of manner

A few other suffixes can be added to adjectives (and to some nouns and adverbs) to form adverbs of manner (or in some cases direction)¹ (Indian)-fashion; (Amencan)-style, backwards, forwards, northwards, upwards; crossways, lengthways, sideways, clockwise, lengthwise The suffix -wise is often used to make new adverbs meaning 'relating to (the noun)', moneywise, taxwise (How do you manage taxwise?)

7.10 Adverbs of manner with dynamic and stative verbs [> 9.3]

Most adverbs of manner naturally refer to action verbs (laugh loudly, perform badly, drive carefully, etc.) A smaller number of adverbs can also refer to stative verbs (e.g understand perfectly, know well) I hear very badly