J.A.Wines

The object is small in size, square in shape and blue in colour.

Do not waste words on unnecessary description. The object is small, square and blue says it all.

Extra adverbs, used for emphasis, are called intensifiers: soon enough, very nicely, remarkably good, clearly inadequate.

it is easy to fall into the trap of using them tautologically. One way of assessing whether your adverb adds anything is to consider a sentence with the opposite:

She screamed loudly.

As opposed to screaming quietly, perhaps?

He clenched his fists tightly.

How else could he clench his fists?

These are the adverbial equivalents of close proximity and tuna fish

‘80 per cent of married men cheat in America…’

The rest cheat in Europe.

*

Rule 2: The modifying clause or phrase (walking down the high street) should always come as near as possible to the noun or pronoun it modifies.

Sir, Gerald Burton asks where all the comparative and superlative adjectives have gone. As far as popular television is concerned they have all been replaced by one word – fantastic.

LETTER IN THE Telegraph

Most comparatives say that something is more or less something than the other something, if you see what we mean. But it is also a comparative to say that something is the same (or not the same) as something else:

He is as cunning as a fox.

This ring is not as expensive as that one. (I want that one.)

Webster’s dislike of words that weren’t pronounced the way they looked led him to decree that words such as centre and theatre should be spelled center and theater; he also dropped the silent u from words such as colour, favour and honour. In fact, Webster was single-handedly responsible for most of the differences between British and American spelling that survive to this day.

college professor wrote on his blackboard: A woman without her man is nothing.
He then asked his students to punctuate the sentence.
All of the males in the class wrote: A woman, without her man, is nothing. All the females in the class wrote: A woman: without her, man is nothing.