I've got a bad feeling about this

I might have actually talked about this in a blog post in a past lifetime because it is one of the grammatical things that bothers me the most. When I hear/see this error, it makes me cringe a little on the inside.

Anyway, I thought about this mistake because I heard it several times over the past week, notably in class and from the Georgetown coach after their first round loss to Ohio.

Let's set the stage by talking about your friend and mine, the adverb. Adverbs are used to modify verbs, adjectives and adverbs. Often, they end in -ly (e.g. gladly, powerfully, loudly) but don't always have to (e.g. well, quite, always). Related is the adjective which modifies nouns and pronouns. I'm sure you all are familiar with many, many adjectives (e.g. big, red, many, inglorious). You also probably know that you can't modify verbs with adjectives. For example, you wouldn't say that you slept quiet or quick ran, you'd say you slept quietly and quickly ran.

So we come to this mistake that's somewhat common, especially among people who are really trying to use proper grammar but can't quite get there. We come to the mistake of "feeling badly." People "feel badly" often, such as when they do something wrong, hurt someone, hear of someone else's plight, and other such situations.

Unfortunately, unless their sensory abilities have been damaged somehow, they'd be wrong. For simplicity, we'll just talk about two kinds of verbs. First is the action verb which we're most familiar with. To hit, to play, to steal. Basically when a subject is doing something, an action verb is used. These are modified with adverbs. To hit continually, to play tirelessly, to steal quietly.

Next are linking verbs. These are basically forms of "to be" and "seem." Am, became, and, of course, feel. As state of being verbs, these don't take adverbs, but instead predicate nouns or predicate adjectives. I am a Sun Devil. He became an alien. You feel bad.

Really it's not that difficult. I think some people just try to sound too sophisticated. Perhaps they think if it sounds like it's wrong, it must be right. Hey, it's got an -ly so it's got to work right? Sadly, this just isn't the case. For people who don't know the rule, it just sounds weird. For those of us who do, it just lets us know that they are trying too hard to sound smart.

Is this post boring? Snobby, useless, uninformative? Probably, yes, yes, and I hope not. Still, I felt like I had to say something. I don't think perfect grammar is all that important as communication is clear. But one of the things that annoys me the most is when people try to sound smart when it's clear that they don't know what they're talking about. This is a pretty mild example, but still.

Don't be that guy.