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Hopefully - Viewed as a Dangling Modifiers
In the last thirty years or so, a major controversy has arisen in stylistic and
rhetorical circles over the proper usage of the adverb “hopefully.”
Some grammarians began to object when they first encountered constructions
like: “Hopefully, the sun will be shining tomorrow.” Their complaint
stems from the fact that the term “hopefully” dangles, and can be understood to
describe either the speaker's state of mind, or the manner in which the sun
will shine.
In most modern, common speech, “hopefully,” when used in this fashion, is acting as
an embedded interjection or a simple sentence connect (cf. “admittedly,” “mercifully,”
“oddly”). Because it has become so widespread, this use of a dangling adverb does not create
ambiguity. For example, most speakers will interpret “Hopefully, John got home last night.” as
meaning that the speaker hopes that John arrived home last night, not that John
got home last night in a hopeful manner.
In recent years the common usage has become much more acceptable, perhaps because its
semantics are reminiscent of the German hoffentlich (“it is to be hoped that”)
which does imply that the speaker hopes that the sun will shine. Therefore, it has become more
prevalent to express “hopefully” as to manner in a rearranged construction,
generally without a comma: “Mark awaited word from his agent hopefully.” or,
even more specifically, “Mark hopefully awaited word from his agent.”
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A copy of the license is included in the section entitled “GNU
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