My parents are always correcting me on this. Please could someone enlighten me - when do you use each?
Wrongly (and most words which end in -ly) are adverbs, so they go with verbs. Which are the "doing words".
So you could read wrongly, you could drive wrongly, put something together wrongly.
Wrong is an adjective so it goes with a noun, so you have the wrong book, the wrong car, the wrong set of instructions.
Does that sort it out?
That is depressingly simple. I really shouldn't have got to this age without being able to do that.
DadDadDad
Thu 15-Dec-11 23:56:45
But then you have phrases such as "You're doing it wrong" where the pedant might insist it should be "wrongly", as it modifies a verb (to do), but it sounds perfectly fine to me to use "wrong" - it's just idiomatic.
Could have similar argument about: "You've put your jumper on wrong"
"You've wrongly put your jumper on" (you should have put on your cardigan)
"You've put your jumper on wrongly" (you've got your arm through the head hole)
How about "You said it wrong" / "You said it wrongly"?
