5 exercises — practise placing frequency, degree, and certainty adverbs correctly in technical writing.
0 / 5 completed
1 / 5
Which sentence places the frequency adverb "rarely" correctly for standard technical writing?
Mid-position placement is standard for frequency adverbs like "rarely": they go after the subject and before the main verb, or after the first auxiliary/be-verb ("The service rarely times out"). Option B places "rarely" after the full verb phrase, which sounds unnatural for a single-word frequency adverb outside of contrastive emphasis. Option C ("Rarely the service times out") is ungrammatical in a declarative statement without inversion (it would need "Rarely does the service time out" to be grammatical as fronted negative-adverb inversion). Option D incorrectly splits the phrasal verb "times out" with the adverb, which is not how English phrasal verbs work.
2 / 5
Choose the sentence with correct placement of the degree adverb "significantly" in a performance report.
"Significantly reduced" places the degree adverb immediately before the verb it modifies, which is the standard mid-position for adverbs modifying a transitive verb followed by its object. Option A places "significantly" after the object, which sounds like an afterthought and creates ambiguity about whether it modifies "reduced" or "by 40%". Option C uses "significantly" as a sentence adverb (meaning "importantly"), which changes the meaning entirely — it now comments on the whole clause rather than the degree of reduction. Option D incorrectly splits the verb from its direct object with the adverb, which is ungrammatical for transitive verb-object pairs.
3 / 5
In a design doc, which placement of "always" is correct for describing a system invariant?
"Is always invalidated" is correct: with the verb "be" (including as an auxiliary in the passive voice), the adverb of frequency goes immediately after "be" and before the past participle. Option A incorrectly places "always" before "is", which is ungrammatical word order for a be-verb. Option C breaks up the passive verb phrase incorrectly. Option D fronts "always" for emphasis, which is grammatical but stylistically unusual and less standard for describing a routine system invariant in a design doc — mid-position (option B) is the neutral, expected form.
4 / 5
Which sentence correctly places "probably" to express a moderate degree of certainty about a bug's cause?
"Is probably caused" follows the standard rule: certainty adverbs like "probably", "certainly", and "definitely" go after "be" and before the past participle in a passive construction. Option A is correct. Option B ("probably is caused") reverses the order and sounds noticeably less natural, though not fully ungrammatical — most native-speaker style guides still prefer adverb-after-"be". Option C splits "is caused" with "probably" in a way that sounds like an afterthought rather than a calibrated certainty marker. Option D awkwardly fronts "probably" and adds an unnecessary comma, disrupting the clause.
5 / 5
A postmortem states: "The rollback procedure _____ failed to restore the previous configuration." Choose the adverb placement that correctly conveys near-total failure.
"Almost completely" is the correct order: "almost" is a degree adverb that modifies the following adverb "completely", so it must precede it ("almost completely failed" = the failure was nearly total, i.e., a small part of the restoration succeeded). Reversing the order ("completely almost") is ungrammatical because "completely" cannot be modified by a following "almost" in this construction. Adding commas (options C and D) incorrectly treats the adverbs as separate parenthetical elements rather than a single modifying chain, which disrupts the intended meaning and reads unnaturally in technical prose.