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Linking verbs, or copulas, as they were once known, convey the condition or state of the subject rather than expressing an action. Using an adverb instead of an adjective to complete a verb like feel, be or seem-a linking verb-is a widespread error. You may feel sorry, sympathetic, sad or . . . "Tell Ms. Wimplemeyer I’ll be off sick for the next two weeks." "Oh, no," you say. "I have been stricken with chicken pox," he announces. Other absolutes include perfect, false, fatal, complete, unanimous and, perhaps the best known yet still worst abused, unique. I can’t be more pregnant than my friend, and no one, regardless of belly size, can be the most pregnant. As any drugstore kit will tell you, either you are or you aren’t.

Certain adjectives cannot logically be expressed in comparative and superlative forms because their meaning is absolute, without degrees. One footnote on these forms: beware of what is beyond compare. Yet because only two witnesses are being compared, the comparative, not the superlative, is the correct form: Both witnesses provided accounts of the fatal landslide, but Ms. Wimplemeyer’s proved the most accurate.To many people, for instance, the following sentence seems perfectly fine: But if we rely on our ear to tell us what sounds right, we may overlook the distinction between comparative and superlative. But the fox lurking inside the hole was the wisest of all, and he congratulated himself on his easy dinner.The mouse, wiser than the owl, escaped his wily predator by scampering into a nearby hole.

But there are still tricky errors to watch for. These parts of speech usually pose few problems for writers, especially because their functions are so distinct: adjectives describe nouns and pronouns, while adverbs describe verbs, adjectives, other adverbs and sometimes whole sentences. Just as we put salt and pepper in our food, we sprinkle adjectives and adverbs throughout our writing to add flavour, subtlety, variety and character.