Hopefully (was disappearing prepositions)

[Baker, John]

Arnold,

        While I'm basically with you (standing back in admiration, actually), I don't think you can push the Copy Editor Effect too far.  There are plenty of examples where a careful reading will reveal the intended meaning, but the reader has to read the passage twice to get there.  These examples do not, in my experience, arise with "hopefully," which I have never known to be used ambiguously except in artificial passages intended to make a point.

John Baker


-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU]On Behalf
Of Arnold M. Zwicky
Sent: Monday, October 04, 2004 5:08 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: Hopefully (was disappearing prepositions)


and then there's the impressive Copy Editor Effect, which i've written
about here before (though not, i think, under this name).  take pretty
much any innovative usage that the manuals decry because by introducing
potential ambiguity it threatens clarity, and see how experienced copy
editors deal with it.  they are virtually *flawless*.  they know
exactly which instances of "hopefully" (for instance) to replace by "I
hope" or "it is to be hoped that" or whatever, and which ones to leave
alone.  there's no unclarity here at all.