5 exercises — choosing the right degree adverb for technical descriptions, specs, and PR notes: highly, significantly, relatively, increasingly, fairly.
0 / 5 completed
1 / 5
Which degree adverb fits most naturally in a technical specification: "The new caching layer is ___ faster than the previous implementation."?
Significantly is the best choice for technical writing. It conveys a measurable, notable difference and is standard in technical specs, benchmark reports, and performance analyses. "Very" is informal and vague — avoid it in professional documentation. "Quite" downplays the improvement (British English: "quite good" = fairly good, not very good). "A bit" is conversational, not appropriate for a specification. In technical writing, prefer: significantly, considerably, substantially, markedly, appreciably over "very" or "a bit".
2 / 5
A developer is writing a PR description. Which sentence uses a degree adverb correctly and appropriately?
Option B is correct: "highly improves" uses the degree adverb "highly" before a verb to intensify it. "Highly" collocates well with many technical verbs and adjectives: highly scalable, highly available, highly configurable, highly optimised. Option A stacks two degree adverbs before an adjective in a verb phrase — grammatically broken. Option C mixes degree adverbs chaotically. Option D combines "a bit" (informal) with "significantly" (formal) — inconsistent register. Rule: one degree adverb per modification, chosen for register (formal vs informal).
3 / 5
An architect writes: "Microservices are ___ complex to operate than a monolith." Which adverb is most appropriate?
Relatively more complex is correct. "Relatively" is a degree adverb that places complexity in context — it acknowledges complexity without absolute judgement, which is appropriate for balanced technical comparisons. "Fairly more" is grammatically awkward — "fairly" modifies adjectives directly, not comparatives. "Very more" is incorrect — "very" does not modify comparatives; use "much more" or "far more" instead. "Quite more" is also wrong for the same reason. For comparative structures, use: considerably more, significantly more, far more, slightly more, marginally more, somewhat more.
4 / 5
Choose the sentence with the correct degree adverb + adjective collocation for a technical context.
Option A is correct: "increasingly" is itself an adverb of degree meaning "to a greater and greater extent" — it does not need another degree adverb before it. Adding "very", "fairly", or "highly" before "increasingly" is redundant and grammatically odd. "Increasingly" collocates well with technical trends: increasingly common, increasingly important, increasingly complex, increasingly automated, increasingly adopted. Use it to describe trends: "Serverless architectures are increasingly common in enterprise deployments."
5 / 5
Which sentence correctly distinguishes between highly and fairly in a technical context?
Option C is correct. "Well documented" is the natural collocation — "well" is the degree adverb for "documented" (past participle used as adjective). "Highly available" is a fixed technical term meaning the system has high uptime/SLA — 99.9%+ availability. "Fairly" means moderately, which implies adequate but not excellent — avoid it for positive technical claims unless hedging is appropriate. "Highly" intensifies technical qualities: highly available, highly scalable, highly optimised, highly secure. "Fairly" is better for neutral hedging: fairly straightforward, fairly common, fairly well understood.