It seems perfectly natural to me
Hang me if you will, but I’m here to
defend the benighted and besmirched adverb hopefully.
When I attended college in the late 1960s
and early ’70s, I was taught in no uncertain terms that hopefully only could be used as a shortened substitute for “in a
hopeful manner.”
The
panhandler hopefully approached the well-dressed businessman for a handout.
The captain of the oil freighter hopefully steered his vessel out of the path of the approaching
typhoon.
Never – never, never, ever! – could hopefully be used to mean “I hope” or
“it is to be hoped.” To use the adverb in such a manner was to commit a grammar
felony worthy of utter contempt and eternal damnation.
Hopefully, we shall emerge unscathed from the threat of the coronavirus.
The
presidential election approaches, and hopefully, I’ll soon never have to watch another campaign
commercial ever again.
Use of the word hopefully in the
sentences above seems perfectly natural to me, and the meaning I’m trying to
convey comes through with unmistakable clarity. So why the sturm und drang
from the high priests of grammar orthodoxy?
Nonsensical argument
Many purists refer to hopefully in such sentences as a “sentence modifier” since it
doesn’t modify a specific person, thing or action. Ascribing such an emotion –
hopefulness – to a nonperson, so goes this reasoning, is nonsensical. Only a
human being or some reasonably advanced animal can be hopeful.
That’s a fair point, I suppose. But I
never have been able to muster much enthusiasm for the struggle over the soul
of hopefully, despite the best
efforts of my college freshman composition teacher, whose name I no longer
recall, and numerous newspaper editors over the years.
They were adamant and steadfast in their
antipathy to sentence-modifying hopefully.
Compromise was unthinkable. Any relaxation of their rigid interpretation of
grammar purity was blasphemy.
Faced with their implacable hostility to hopefully, I did what any peace-loving
child of the Sixties would have done. Instead of fight, I switched. Let others
fight the good fight. I would erase hopefully
from my writing and save myself the grief. To use the catch phrase of a later
generation – whatever, man.
Most grammarians date the first use of hopefully as a sentence modifier to the
1930s. But Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary
of English Usage says the frequency of use spiked sharply in the early
1960s, as did the squawks of alarm from grammar purists.
“It is barbaric, illiterate, offensive,
damnable, and inexcusable,” rumbled Hal Borland, author of When the Legends
Die, as quoted in the Harper Dictionary
of Contemporary Usage.
Eternal war
“Chalk squeaking on a blackboard is to be
preferred to this usage,” opined the late, great Charles Kuralt of CBS News,
also in Harper.
“I have sworn eternal war on this bastard
adverb,” writer A.B. Guthrie Jr., who wrote the screenplay to the film classic
“Shane,” told Harper.
In his 1991 The Handbook of Good English, Edward D. Johnson called the deployment
of hopefully as a sentence modifier “perhaps
the most controversial usage in the language.”
“And many of those who condemn it – not
all of whom are over 50 – are apt to consider it not only questionable or
sloppy but despicable,” he wrote. “I strongly advise avoiding their scorn.”
He said he disliked the usage “partly
because I encounter it almost invariably in bad writing.” But Johnson, an
honest, pragmatic soul, acknowledged that hopefully
as a sentence modifier might weather the storm, “like many another usage that was
considered a barbarism when it first appeared.”
Almost three decades have passed since
Johnson wrote those words. And the hub-bub that surrounded the use of the word
as a sentence modifier has largely subsided. Has hopefully ultimately prevailed
against the purists? Yes … and no.
In Garner’s
American Usage, published in 2004, Bryan A. Garner says that anyone using hopefully as a shortcut to I hope or it is to be hoped “is likely to have a credibility problem with
many readers.”
“Avoid it in all senses if you’re concerned
with your credibility: if you use it in the traditional way, many readers will
think it odd; if you use it in the newish way, a few readers will tacitly
tut-tut you,” he said.
The nos have it
In the first edition of the Harper Dictionary of Contemporary Usage,
published in 1975, William and Mary Morris asked a large panel of usage
consultants – from a wide range of disciplines – whether in writing hopefully could
properly be used in the sense of “we hope.” The response: 76% no; 24% yes.
Ten years later, for the second edition,
the Morrises again polled the group on the acceptability of hopefully as a stand-in for “I hope” or
“we hope.” 83% no; 17% yes.
And yet, 35 years later, the use of hopefully as a sentence modifier meaning
is ubiquitous. Even the Associated Press
Stylebook deems such usage “acceptable.”
Why did it survive the savage frontage
assault waged against it by grammar orthodoxy? Perhaps the answer lies in why
writers began using hopefully as a
sentence modifier in the first place.
Theodore Bernstein, The New York Times’ former editing guru, believes that necessity was
the mother of its invention.
“More and more the word is being used –
and no doubt overused – to mean it is to be hoped,” he said in Miss Thistlebottom’s Hobgloblins, a
delightful style and usage guide published in 1971. “The reason is evident: No
other word in English expresses that thought. In a single word we can say it is
regrettable that (regrettably) or it
is fortunate that (fortunately) or it
is lucky that (luckily), and it would
be comforting if there were such a word as hopably
or …hopingly, but there isn’t.”
The pragmatic route
Historian Barbara Tuchman also makes the
pragmatic case for the use of hopefully
as a useful shortcut to I hope or It is to be hoped.
“In spite of all the disapproval of my
learned colleagues,” she said in Harper,
“I think ‘hopefully’ is here to stay and rightfully, for one very good reason:
that it is needed and when a word is truly and really needed and there is no
substitute (‘It is to be hoped’ is unusable) it should enter the language, no
matter if technically ungrammatical.”
The always sensible and reasonable
Benjamin Dreyer adds a little perspective to the conversation.
“If you can live with ‘There was a
terrible car accident; thankfully, no one was hurt,’ you can certainly live
with ‘Tomorrow’s weather forecast is favorable; hopefully, we’ll leave on
time,’” he says in Dreyer’s English.
“I’m not sure how ‘hopefully,’ among all
such disjunct usages, got singled out for abuse, but it’s unfair and ought not
to be borne,” Dreyer adds.
Time to surrender
Ultimately, says Garner, the purists have
won every grammatical skirmish, but now, paradoxically, they must surrender the
field.
“The battle is now over,” he says in his Modern American Usage. “Hopefully
is now a part of American English, and it has all but lost its traditional
meaning.”
Alas, Garner is wrong, I’m afraid. I
suspect grammar zealots will continue to lob shells at the just-trying-to-be-helpful
hopefully for the foreseeable future. Someday, perhaps, they’ll see the
light and direct their near-sighted gaze at more frightful grammar ghouls.
After all, hope springs eternal, don’t it?
