In school I
learned that adverbs can modify verbs, adjective, or other adverbs. Never did I
hear the term “sentence adverbs”, and it was only recently that I first heard
of this concept.
As the name
suggests, it is an adverb that modifies the whole sentence, and not a
particular word in the sentence. An example is, “Fortunately, Hurricane Isaac
missed Tampa and the GOP convention was able to proceed with its business last
week. Unfortunately, all decisions had already been made beforehand, and there
was no real business to conduct.”
Here the
adverbs “fortunately and “unfortunately” are used as sentence adverbs, modifying
the whole thought. One could use “It is fortunate that”, or “I think it is fortunate
that”, instead of “fortunately”, but obviously the use of one word is preferable
to the longer and more awkward phrase that would be needed as a substitute.
So far so
good. But the problem comes in when such words are used improperly. A news
anchor said “X allegedly killed Y.” Here the use of “allegedly” right before
the verb makes it look like it is the verb that is being modified, and this
makes no sense, for one cannot be “allegedly killed”. “Allegedly” here is being
used as a sentence adverb, and needs to be set off with a comma (if at the
beginning of the sentence), or two (if in the middle).
An even worse
misuse of “allegedly” occurred in a news report which stated that “X was being charged
with allegedly killing Y”. This is total nonsense; X was not being charged with
allegedly killing Y, he was being charged with killing Y. The concept of “allegedly”
is contained in the verb “charged”, and no further modification is necessary or
at all useful. News people seem to be so obsessed with being politically
correct that they continue to make these glaring errors.
The number
one problem in this area is of course the word “hopefully”, whose careless use
is widely castigated. I could say, “Hopefully, you will find this explanation of
sentence adverbs helpful”. The problem here is that “hopefully” does not modify
anything found in the sentence; it is thrown into the mix solely to convey the writer’s
point of view. It is not a real adverb here, and should be replaced with “I
hope”, or something similar.
(Some may
complain that “hopefully” is a weasel word, in which the writer of speaker uses
the passive voice in order to avoid responsibility for the matter at hand. An example
is when a president responds to a scandal in his administration, as Reagan once
did, by saying “Mistakes were made”. But this is not the real crux of the problem
with ”hopefully”.)
While some
grammarians have come to accept the use of “hopefully”, the best advice is
still to avoid it unless you know your audience is accepting of such casual use
of the language. One need not resort to awkward and wooden alternatives like “It
is to be hoped”, or “One hopes”, as there are more natural-sounding options
available like “Let’s hope”, or “With luck”. Let's hope you can learn to use them instead.
