Emdashes—Modern Times Between the Lines
The Basics:
About Emdashes | Email us
Ask the Librarians
Best of Emdashes: Hit Parade
A Web Comic: The Wavy Rule
Features & Columns:
Headline Shooter
On the Spot
Looked Into
Sempé Fi: Cover Art
David Remnick Demonstrates the Correct Usage of "Hopefully"
Filed under: Eds. Tagged: David Remnick, TOTT
In his Comment this week about Al Gore, global warming, &c.:
Even the national pastime was in danger. “But,†Gore added hopefully, “I have faith in baseball commissioner George W. Bush when he says, ‘We will find the steroid users if we have to tap every phone in America!’ â€There you have it. That’s how to employ “hopefully”; it means “with hope.” My mother taught me to say “with any luck” when the world’s bad influences whisper phrases like “Hopefully, I will win the Nobel Prize in Literature.” I pass that along to you, hopefully. If anyone is getting ready to recite that the English language is always evolving, I will globally warm them.
Comments
The correct version of that sentence would of course be: “Hopefully, I will win the Nobel Prize in Literature, irregardless.â€
On a tangent…it appears I am the one remaining person in the United States to understand that “critique” is a noun and not a verb. People prefer to “critique” because they think “criticizing” anything would be rude.
The latter usage has a kind of faux sophistication, although to my ear it just sounds semiliterate. (Especially given that my understanding of critique, even as a noun, comes via Kant and Marx, who use it to mean a form of analysis much more rigorous than casual evaluation.)
I realize that it is wasting my time complaining about this and that I should just continue to grind my teeth in silence.
As usual, I can’t but agree with McLemee: “critique”, in any realm outside of pure reason, seems to appeal because of its chintzy -ique ending, which gives it a gauze of genteel Frenchness.
As for me, I can’t abide “cliché” as an adjective (to say nothing of “clichéd”).
Scott—remember, criticism is only OK if it’s “constructive criticism.”
Yes — but keep in mind that, as Bakunin said, the urge to destroy can be a creative urge.
Bakunin, I mean.
One day I am going to write a book about Bukharin, Bakunin, and Bakhtin. That should be good for a nervous breakdown or two.
These torpid snow primates will survive the winter hopefully. To them, the glass is always half full.
Madison, I hope you know that whether the glass is half full or half empty, some primate is going to have to wash it.
Isn’t it annoying when you are criticizing the world’s usage mistakes and you make one yourself? (Scott.)
I have pretty much given up, and I now accept (kind of, sort of, grudgingly) “hopefully”—though you won’t hear it uttered from my lips.
But what I cannot abide is when one of my non-writer clients changes my “use” to “utilize.” Because it’s so much smarter-sounding to use three syllables than one, you know?