#HOPEFULLY IN A SENTENCE MANUAL#

Thankfully, Shakespeare won the popularity contest, and we can enjoy his plays in any city in the world, and only rarely are such pontificators of invented grammar rules something we have to put up with. The issue that some people have with the preceding sentence is that hopefully should rightfully be confined to meaning in. As in Hopefully, people will stop debasing the English language, and we can all go back to writing as Chaucer did. (And Shakespeare clearly isn't infallible in other ways - his geography is hilariously bad and his history allowed clocks to chime in Ancient Rome, but it's bad geography and history, beautifully expressed).īut that was a different era, and such ramblers actually cited Shakespeare as an example of bad English, much as people today may complain that an MTV host saying 'yo! We gonna pimp yo' ride sweeeeet!' is a bad example to children learning English today. It was the sense of hopefully that we define as it is hoped: I hope: we hope. You might think that today we could easily counter such foolishness by pointing out Shakespeare and the King James Bible use it, and you don't have to believe in biblical infallibility - or indeed believe any of it to any degree - to believe the King James is as infallible as can be when it comes to grammar, with Shakespeare as grammar made flesh. I'll agree with the latter and allow the former as true much of the time, though it can be the graceless option other times.īut some went further and said that there was some magical rule against prepositions. Now, some would say that it is often more graceful to place the preposition before the object, or that it's a good idea to make sure that the preposition isn't so separated from the words it most closely relates to as to cause confusion.

The idea that this means anything in English only follows if we allow that 'means the idea in English anything' is a well-written clause (hey, the preposition's in the right place!).įollowing Dryden, some more people followed suit. *Watch for a future article on the use of their.Ironically, English is overall a much stricter language than Latin about word order, and it's precisely because of this that in Latin a preposition not only can't appear at the end of a sentence, but can not appear after its object (that is indeed the etymology of the word. Ultimately, I guess, each writer must make up their* own mind. But on the other hand, I recently encountered 'impact is a noun only' still alive and well in the style guide of a large organization. After all, most people have long forgotten the 'impact' wars of the late 1980s. My vote is to use it until people get over its history. Meanwhile, utterly dismisses Bernstein and all critics and solidly supports the use of hopefully as an independent comment. Never use it at all, because no matter what you do, someone will think it is wrong. The advice here? All the controversy has ruined this word. Yet another voice in the squabble is The Oxford Dictionary of American Usage and Style, by Bryan Garner. Chicago says that the usage I cite above is 'here to stay,' but snips, 'But many careful writers deplore the new meaning' Bernstein has not been updated, fyi, since 1965. My opinion, stated above, agrees solidly with The Gregg Reference Manual.

#HOPEFULLY IN A SENTENCE MANUAL#

If you are curious about some of the players in the controversy, they are The Careful Writer by Theodore Bernstein, The Chicago Manual of Style, and The Gregg Reference Manual. If you need a more technical term, they are 'sentential modifiers,' adverbs that modify the entire sentence. These words act as asides to the reader to indicate the writer's opinion or attitude about the entire sentence. The controversy used to be about whether hopefully is an 'independent comment' like finally, actually, regrettably, fortunately, and many other words. Long answer: Some people used to say you could not, but grammar books now say you can. Can you start a sentence with the word 'hopefully?' Short answer: Yes.

Hopefully in a sentence