Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Short PSA

This bugs me. It bugs me to the extent that I’m going to share it here in the hopes that someone—even if it’s just one person—will change the way they speak.

“Hopefully” is an adverb. That means it modifies a verb. That's it.

You can feel full of hope when you say something, “'It would be great if he called me tomorrow', I said hopefully”, or you can be hopeful about something, “I am hopeful that he’ll call me tomorrow”.

But if you say, “Hopefully he will call me tomorrow”, that does NOT mean you hope he will call you.

No.

It means thatwhen he does call you, HE will be filled with hope. And even then it’s an awkward structure.

So stop saying “hopefully” as though it were anything other than an adverb.

Thank you.