If you’ve been paying attention to recent grammar news, then you would think the world has ended. Last week, the Associated Press Stylebook — the “Bible” for modern journalists — announced that it had caved in on the much reviled “hopefully.”
What’s wrong with hopefully, you ask? Well, the grammar fascists have long argued that it can mean only “in a hopeful manner,” as in, “I walked hopefully to my midterm exam.” They argue that the word can modify only verbs, not whole sentences. Using it in the sense of “it is hoped” is the biggest no-no in modern grammar fascism (or, at least, that’s the sense I get), reaching the level of split infinitives and burning copies of Strunk and White’s Elements of Style.
Hopefully, no one who reads this will take to the streets decrying the death of the English language — though, I know some who might. The copy curmudgeons need to just calm down and understand that their stance on “hopefully” has been dead wrong from the start.
The word-that-must-not-be-used is what linguists call a disjunctive adverb — or more clearly referred to as a sentence adverb. That means it modifies the sentence as a whole but is not necessary information.
Such words have permeated the English language from its beginning. You probably use such words all the time. Ever started a sentence with “unfortunately”? That’s a disjunctive adverb, but the grammar grumblers have never deemed it an anathema.
So why “hopefully”? Well, at some point in the 1930s, the ungrammatical masses began adapting it to the disjunctive purpose. Before then, it had been used only for actions done in a hopeful manner.
As it grew in popularity, the grammar police were shaken to their collective core. The reason? Most people are just averse to change. In language, those people are called prescriptivists.
Prescriptivists like to make set rules and force spoken language to adhere. When the general public does not listen, the grammar gurus scream “barbarians” (The Washington Post’s description for “hopefully” users after it heard the maddening news) — and that’s just downright foolish.
English is a fluid language, more so than most, because it borrows from almost every other tongue on the planet. Its rules are flexible enough to allow nouns to be turned into verbs or adjectives and verb forms to play the role of adjective or noun. That enables English speakers great flexibility in their speaking and writing.
I’ve often been accused of being a prescriptivist because my job is to know the ins and outs of grammar, to specify rules and enforce them. Many fellow Post employees send me links to online articles about grammar mistakes that are not really errors. They try to trip me up and convince me that I’m correcting non-goofs.
Hopefully, from the previous 450 words or so, you’ve gleaned that I’m in favor of the barbaric word and am, in fact, not a prescriptivist.
No matter how cliché this sounds, rules are made to broken — but, hopefully, only in certain cases. Otherwise, we are nothing more than linguistic terrorists.
John Nero is a senior studying journalism and the copy chief of The Post. Lost all hope for English’s survival? Hopefully, you’ll email him at jn265708@ohiou.edu.
