Hopefully

 

There are still a lot of people holding on to an old superstition about “hopefully.” Here’s how it goes: “Hopefully,” they say, means “in a hopeful manner.” So it should only be used to describe actions done in this manner.

Emma hopefully mailed out ten resumes.

Hopefully, John dialed Marcia’s number.

Therefore, the idea goes, it can’t be used as a sentence adverb to mean “I hope” or “It is to be hoped that.”

Hopefully, it will rain tomorrow, in this view, is nonsense because rain can’t fall in a hopeful manner.

If this seems ridiculous, that’s because it is. The so-called correct use -- Emma hopefully mailed out ten resumes -- is almost nonexistent. By far the most common way it’s used is as a sentence adverb to mean “I hope” or the like. And yes, common use counts. Remember: that’s where correctness comes from in the first place.

But even if you don’t like that idea, there’s a better reason you can use hopefully to mean “I hope”: The dictionary. Look up "hopefully" in just about any dictionary, modern or old, and you'll see that one of its definitions is "it is to be hoped that."

 

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