“The team played real good” - Adjective and adverb attitudes

Booher's Rules of Business Grammar - Dianna Booher 2009

“The team played real good”
Adjective and adverb attitudes

WELL VERSUS GOOD

I don’t mean to argue again here, but they didn’t. The team may have played well. But it didn’t play good. I bet you’re wondering how I know when I wasn’t even at the game, right?

Good describes something or somebody. (Like other adjectives, good can be used to describe only nouns or pronouns—people, places, things, or ideas.) Examples:

Mortimer is a good manager.

Florida is a good location for our warehouse.

Those engineers made a good decision in drilling for oil.

Freedom from pricing restrictions is a good idea.

Well tells how something is done. Examples:

Dilbert writes well.

The engineering team planned well.

The machines run well.

The car drives well in most road conditions.

In any given situation, ask yourself: Am I talking about a thing, person, place, or idea? If so, use good. Or, am I talking about how something or somebody performed? If so, use well.

Memory tip

An advertisement for an optometry clinic appeared in the Houston Chronicle. The caption above the photo of a beautiful girl wearing eyeglasses read: “The frames make you look good; we make you look well.”

Good is correct because it refers to the person (you).

Well is correct because it refers to how you look (meaning “see”).

The caption meant this: The frames make you as a person look beautiful or handsome. Our optometrists make you see well.

Obviously, the company hired a clever grammarian as its marketing agent. Readers probably puzzled over that ad for a day or two before they “caught” the meaning. And if you’re writing advertising copy, that’s the idea—to catch people’s attention.

You, of course, will no longer be puzzled by such clever ads.

Not only do you look good, but also you understand the difference well.