Simon Heffer, the Telegraph columnist, has offered to stand for parliament against Sir Alan Haselhurst, the MP for Saffron Walden, who claimed £12,000 expenses for gardening. Mr Heffer commented on Sir Alan’s grammar, declaring that ‘the solecism “hopefully this website will also shed light on the parliamentary system” should have been beaten out of him decades ago’. It might have been, when use of hopefully was a shibboleth. Does it remain one?
‘Hopefully the critics will come to their senses,’ writes Patricia O’Connor in her new book Myths and Misconceptions of the English Language. She is American, and I came across her verdict in The New York Times Book Review last month. She would include Mr Heffer among the ‘fuddy-duddies’ resisting evolution of usage.
The problem is that some adverbs (such as rapidly) qualify verbs and verbal phrases.
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