Flibbertigibbet

(Please correct me if I'm mistaken, but aren't you interested in corrections to your grammar? I don't mean to be petty, but I thought you might want to know...)

It's "horribly" (adverb, modifying the verb, "treated"). "Horrible" is an adjective and in the way you used it, it would modify "people", which still makes sense, but I doubt you intended that meaning. (You meant that the treatment was horrible, not the people, doing the treating, right?)

Here is a grammar question for Mr. Bookworm, if he 's interested:

Which of the following is correct, and why?

A. "This apple tastes bad!"
B. "This apple tastes badly!"

Now, I'm reasonably certain that A is correct and B is not, since B, it seems to me, is saying that when the apple tastes something, it does so very poorly, and that's just silly.

But if A is correct, then wouldn't that make "bad", in this case, an adverb modifying the verb "tastes"? But if you reformulated A into "This is a bad apple!", then "bad" is clearly an adjective modifying "apple".

Okay, so I guess my question is really: What is the rule that explains why it's meaningful and correct to phrase it that way? I tried looking up active vs. passive verbs and positive, comparative, and superlative adjectives, but I can't find a clear statement or explanation.

Okay, I promise this isn't a set-up. Literally 10 seconds after I clicked "Post", I found the following page: (http://tinyurl.com/3d38bg)

The explanation is exactly what I was asking for.

(So, never mind, I guess. *grin*)