ACT® · English: Usage Conventions
Good and Well After Linking Verbs
After a linking verb, the word describes the subject, so you need an adjective like good or bad, not an adverb like well or badly. Saying 'I feel badly' actually claims your sense of touch is broken.
A linking verb works like an equals sign: subject = description. Verbs like feel, seem, look, smell, taste, and be connect the subject straight to a word that describes it, so that word must be an adjective. 'I feel bad' means you equal bad, as in unwell or sorry. 'I feel badly' means your fingers don't work right, because badly is an adverb describing how you touch things, not how you feel inside.
The trap is that 'good' sounds casual and 'well' sounds proper, so people swap in 'well' everywhere to sound correct. But well is almost always an adverb, describing a verb, not a noun. 'I did good' is wrong after the action verb 'did' because good can't describe an action, it describes a thing. 'I did well' fixes that. The one twist: well can also be an adjective meaning healthy, as in 'She looks well after her surgery,' where it describes her condition, not an action.
The real test is whether the verb is linking (equals sign, subject = description, needs adjective) or doing real action (needs adverb to describe how the action happened). The same verb can flip jobs: 'The soup tastes good' links taste back to soup, so good is right. 'The chef tastes the soup carefully' makes tastes an action, describing how he tastes, so carefully is right. Check what the verb is actually doing in that sentence before picking the word.
Key terms
- Linking verb
- A verb that connects a subject to a word describing it, acting like an equals sign.
- Adjective
- A word that describes a noun or pronoun, such as good or bad.
- Adverb
- A word that describes a verb, adjective, or another adverb, such as well or badly.
- Action verb
- A verb that describes something the subject does, which needs an adverb to describe how it's done.
Watch it explained
- How it worksHow does a linking verb act like an equals sign, sending the describing word back onto the subject?
- Common mistakeWhy isn't 'I did good on the test' right when 'good' is plainly a positive word?
- Common mistakeWhy doesn't 'well' serve as a polite upgrade of 'good' in every single sentence?
- Going furtherWhat changes when a verb like 'looks' or 'smells' is doing real action instead of linking?
Check yourself
End of topic.