heartily

AntonijaCan you congratulate somebody heartily?

Can you please make the second bolded phrase more elgant?Thank you.



Johnie was excellent in Rovinj and everybody congratulated him heartily. It was entirely Johnie's merit and there wasn't any coincidence in this victory.

I don't use the word

I think you're more like to hear that he received hearty congratulations than that he was congratulated heartily. But the second part of your post isn't clear - "there wasn't any coincidence in this victory" - I'm not sure what this means.

"there wasn't any coincidence in this victory"
probably means:
it wasn't produced by chance, pure luck, happenstance

Okay, yes, in truth I did infer that but I meant to convey that it needs to be re-written.

What about this:

Johnie was excellent in Rovinj and he recieved hearty congratulations. It was entirely his merit and it definitely wasn't pure luck.

I think you need to replace "it" with the specific antecedent - presumably his victory? or perhaps just his strong finish? As it reads now, the reader is mostly likely going to try to attach "it" to the most recent noun phrase - in this case, the congratulations. And once the reader realizes that that doesn't make sense, he'll have to try to figure out what you mean. They'll be able to infer, like