This is how to use the word "nowadays"

Is “Nowadays” an Adverb or an Adjective?

The word "Nowadays" appears to be a contraption of "Now are days" which on special scrutiny does not veer off the track of meaning to say "these days," or "these are days."

If you kill the word boundaries in "nowaredays," you will certainly have "nowadays" in speech and by subtraction of the medial "re", it'd end up in "nowadays."

This reflects the speed of sound against that of eyes racing over words in print. Having understood how we came about that word, we'd proceed to what people do with it in speech.

"Nowadays" is neither an adjective nor a noun; it is an adverb. According to Cambridge Dictionary, it means "at the present time," or “in contrast to the past.”

You should therefore not employ an indiscriminate use of it. For example, you might be guilty of “adjectivising” it thus: "Nowadays children have a bad sense of taste for an exotic life."

This sounds very smooth, right? This is a very grammatical sentence. But. Where is the comma? And that is beaming the light on all that is wrong here. Not inserting a comma after “Nowadays” suggests that you are making it function as an adjective.

In speech, you should observe a brief pause after “Nowadays,” it exonerates you from the error of making it sound like an adjective. Let's change the position of the word "nowadays." "Children have a bad sense of taste for an exotic life nowadays."

You won’t need a comma here to make perfect sense. Changing the position of the adverb does not in any way alter the meaning. Can we do the same for an adjective?

"Beautiful lady is dancing." Now let's take the adjective to the end of the sentence and see what it gives us "Lady is dancing beautiful." Have you noticed the incongruity?

We have it like that because "beautiful" cannot be used as an adverb. You would have to turn its adjective form to an adverb before it can occupy a meaningful place at the end of the sentence. So let's read this: Lady is dancing beautifully.

You hear how beautiful that sounds? Webster uses this example: "People don't wear hats much nowadays." It’d be an error to place the adverb at the beginning of this sentence without following it with a comma.

This is what it reads like: “Nowadays people don't wear hats much.” The “nowadays” at the beginning of this sentence is not an adjective but an adverb. But it won’t be seen as an adverb if the comma is not present.

Not that these sentences are wrong when “nowadays” is used at the initial position without a comma following it, but people have confused its function to be an adjective while in that position.

Afterall Cambridge Dictionary does not use a comma in this example: “Nowadays people don’t dress up as much as they used to.” To avoid the error of function confusion, insert a comma immediately after “nowadays,” when it begins your sentence.

Let us do this with our former examples:

A. Nowadays, children have a bad sense of taste for an exotic life. B. Nowadays, people don't wear hats much I noticed that some are more likely to say: "Nowadays children" thinking that nowadays is an adjective. Do not try to “possessify” it thus "Nowadays' children..."

To avoid that confusion, I prefer "Children of nowadays." If you wish to change the role of this word, put it in quotation marks. "He is a 'nowadays' kind of person." The point of this is not to invalidate the creative use of words where any word belonging to any word class can be bent into amazing shapes in a bid to drive some meaning home. 

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