Geoff Nunberg, the linguist contributor on NPR’s Fresh Air, is the author of the book The Years of Talking Dangerously.
There was something anticlimactic to the news that the AP Stylebook will no longer be objecting to the use of “hopefully” as a floating sentence adverb, as in, “Hopefully, the Giants will win the division.” It was like seeing an obituary for someone you assumed must have died around the time that Hootenanny went off the air.
But these usage fixations have a tenacious hold. William Safire once described the “hopefully” rule as the litmus test that separated the language snobs from the language slobs. And the rule still has plenty of fans, to judge from the 700 comments on The Washington Post‘s story about the AP’s decision.
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