Unless English grammar has changed in the last few years, then the placement of the word “only” in sentences is one of the biggest grammatical mistakes people make. The proper usage requires that the word restricted by “only” must be perfectly clear. For example, here is an incorrect usage:
“I only ate one donut.”
That’s wrong because the word modified by “only” here is “ate”. The sentence is wrong because it implies that the speaker could have done something else with that donut besides eating it, like throwing it at another person or stomping on it. What the sentence is supposed to mean is that the speaker could have eaten more donuts, but did not (perhaps he was on a diet). If you want to say what you actually mean here, you must move the “only”, making this sentence:
“I ate only one donut.”
Here “only” modifies “one”, giving the correct meaning.
That example should suffice, but I’ll give one more. If a student is accused of cheating by copying prose from a bot on a term paper, they may try to exculpate themselves by saying “I only copied one sentence.” But that’s wrong because it implies the student could have done something else with the sentence besides copying it. And that makes no sense. Again, the proper usage is “I copied only one sentence.”
When some of my friend misplace “only” this way, I correct them, saying that they must remember where to put the word. More important, if they do remember that forever, it will be a legacy from me: something that makes people think of Jerry when they use the word “only.” Only Ceiling Cat knows that I have almost no legacies! (Note the proper use of “only” in the preceding sentence.)
Which brings us to two flagrant misuses of the term in popular culture. The first is in a song I’ve written about recently: one of the greatest rock songs and surely the best one from Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys: “God Only Knows.” Here are a few lyrics (you can hear the original release here); the bolding is mine.
I may not always love you
But long as there are stars above you
You never need to doubt it
I’ll make you so sure about it[Refrain: Carl Wilson]
God only knows what I’d be without you
You can see the problem here. As written, the lyrics imply that God could have done other things than know how the singer would be. (For example, he could be “guessing” or “intuiting” rather than “knowing.” The correct phrasing would be this: “Only God knows what I’d be without you.” But of course that’s awkward: try singing the song using those words instead. The phrasing is ungrammatical but musically more felicitious—by far. I have no beef with that.
This one I do. It is in every ad for Liberty Mutual Insurance, including this clever ad:
But at the end there’s this, which is Liberty Mutual’s slogan:
No, no, no! That implies that you could do other things besides paying to get what you need. (You could, for example, steal what you need.) What it’s trying to say is that the viewer should pay only for the aspects of insurance that he needs. You don’t need flood insurance, for example, if you live in Death Valley.
Of course the correct usage here is this: “Pay only for what you need.” It bothers me that they can’t use proper grammar!
Now of course this is Pecksniffery: hardly a worldshaking issue. But what would life be if we didn’t have little things like this to grouse about?
And surely you have phrases like this that bother you. I welcome them, so please put them in the comments.
What if God knew nothing else but what I’d be without you?
Decades ago, there was a popular song where the singer addresses his ex-girlfriend who is now with another man. He sings, “Baby, if he loves you more than me, . . .” which means “if he loves you more than he loves me.” This makes no sense. The singer clearly means “if he loves you more than I [love you].” I have said for many years that singers and song writers should have to pass a grammar test before being allowed to record songs.
I know that song: it’s “The Worst that Could Happen” by the Brooklyn Bridge (1968). Here’s the video:
The word “even” is similarly misused: “He is so funny, he can even make a cat laugh.” When I was a little kid, I read that line in a story about Abe Lincoln and took it literally.
Speaking of which, misusing “literally” is one of my pet hates: “I literally laughed my head off.” I doubt that.
But recall James Joyce’s opening line of “The Dead” with “Lily, the caretaker’s daughter, was literally run off her feet.”
I imagine my high-school English teacher would retort, if smart-ass me cited that example, “James Joyce can do it. You’re not James Joyce.”
OTOH, a person running has both feet off the ground at the same time during at least part of the stride. So being “literally run off her feet” is redundant but not incorrect, provided she really was running from task to task. The implication is that most caretakers and their daughters ramp up to power walking but no further when they’re in any kind of hurry at all.
Only You by The Platters is the 2nd greatest song to use the word “only.”
I think The Platters got it right… 🙂
I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily incorrect, as the following indicates:
I ate only one donut (and ate nothing else)
I only ate one donut (but I ate other things as well)
The adverbial modifier “only” takes different scope in the two sentences, rendering their meanings different.
But just between you and I, I could care less🙂
LOL, I love the two deliberate errors in the last sentence!
PS, notice I didn’t write “I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s incorrect.” That would be silly.🙂
Or it could be accurate: You weren’t compelled to say it, for some reason, maybe including that informed opinion differs on whether or not the usage is indeed incorrect.
I too view the issue at hand as one only of ambiguous scope, or only one of ambiguous scope, or one of ambiguous scope only. And natural languages have all sorts of ambiguities, not just grammatical ones. Put that in your pipe and smoke it 🙂.
Yes yes! I risk cancer from from smoking that! I’ve written books about it! 🤣
You got the meaning of the two sentences exactly backwards, at least in my dialect of English
In “I ate only one donut”, “only” modifies “one”. E.g. Q: “Are you the greedy SOB who ate up all the donuts?” A: “No. I ate only one donut.”
In “I only ate one donut.”, “only” modifies “ate”. E.g. Q: “We have a lot of work to do today. Did you fortify yourself with a good breakfast?” A: “No. I only ate one donut.”
Yes! I realized that after the editing clock ran out. Please allow me to sleazily turn this into a “teaching moment” (ugh, sorry): exceedingly minor semantic differences tend to wash out on the spur of the interlocutionary moment. This fact has not stopped me from cringing at the error I posted, though.
Riddle me this. Why is ‘I aren’t’ unacceptable but ‘Aren’t I?’ acceptable. For the curious, the more consistent form, ‘I amn’t’, is used in some Scottish dialects. The reality, of course, is much of what people confuse as the proper or correct form of English is simply the highest status form. The English language is best thought of as a family of variations with multiple correct, or proper, alternatives.
I would use “am I not?” instead of “aren’t I?”
“Ain’t I” (e.g. Bugs Bunny).
I agree, Dave.
I love a writer I follow online who starts most of his stories with “Please excuse the grammar errors. English is my second language [bad English is my first.]”
Sorry but on this one I think you have got it wrong. ‘Only’ in ‘I only ate one doughnut’ is not only modifying the word ‘ate’, but the verb phrase ‘ate one doughnut’. Or are you going to argue that my use of the word ‘only’ in the previous sentence was focused on the verb ‘modifying’ and that I was trying to say that it was not modifying but doing something else? Of course in ‘I only ate one doughnut’ the ‘only’ could be focused on just the word ‘ate’, but that would require a different intontation on ‘ate’, implying perhaps that you took 2 doughnuts but only ate one of them. Otherwise with the unmarked intonation pattern you would be understood to mean the only to modify ‘ate one doubhnut’ not just ‘ate’. Putting the ‘only’ before ‘one’ puts a special emphasis on the number rather than the whole phrase and stresses that the ‘only’ applies espeically to ‘one’.
Whatever. You seem to be missing the point that people are misusing the placement of only. My interpretation of the grammar may not be as sophisticated as yours, but the fact remains that people who use “only” in the donut-ian sense are not saying what they mean.
Using Alistair’s explanation where “only” modifies the verb phrase: “I only ate one doughnut, that’s all I did the whole afternoon.”
Just the other day I read somewhere (was it here?) that using correct capitalization and punctuation in a text is considered “rude” in some circles. It’s probably just as well that, with the looming climate calamity, humanity may be extinct in a few generations.
Yes, apparently you’re supposed to leave the period off the end of the last sentence in a text. I have no idea why, but I do it when I’m texting a young person, so they’ll think I’m cool.
Thank you for this post! A student of mine corrected me on “only” some decades ago, and I’m grateful for that. Now, like you, I harangue others.
I’ll add that you might be surprised at the floods and road-destroying torrents one can encounter in Death Valley.
Yes, I know about those floods, and have seen them, but the few residences and buildings in Death Valley are not near them–at least not that I remember.
I agree, and think the word “almost” is also used incorrectly, in the same way.
In this piece you say, “I have almost no legacies,” whereas a lot of people would’ve said, “I almost have no legacies.” This implies that they’re working hard on having no legacies, and they’re just about there!
Wouldn’t brevity in writing suggest you shouldn’t use only in a case like “I ate only one donut”?
Posting for agreement on the grammar … plus:
There is something even worse in the lyric of that song, which so many people adore.
Even using corrected grammar, “Only God knows what I’d be without you” the song is a cry for help. Brian Wilson is in a dark place, because he has the strength to believe a human is responsible for “what he is,” either by tacit acceptance of controlling tapes, or by rational changes to moral code and behavior undertaken intentionally.
I suspect he (aka his character in the song) has realized the woman cannot supply the locus of his identity (he’s paying lip service to the notion that a lover can). He is terrified that he cannot do it either. Deeper, he knows God cannot.
With the intense repeating of the phrase, trying to make it true — he’s hoping God knows, but he knows that God does not know.
An artist’s existential nightmare.
I do not like the world’s seeming universal adoration of this song. It “sounds” happy, but it is a cry of despair.
God Only Knows is a song of adoration. The singing, melody, arrangement and harmonies are beautiful. It deserves its widespread acclaim.
Only God knows how that is an answer to my argument.
I agree with you about 99% on this, and I, too, try to follow the rule of putting “only” immediately next to the word that it modifies.
But I rush to the defense of Brian Wilson. “God only knows what I’d do without you” is perfectly good. “Only” needs to be next to what it modifies, but it can come after as well as before (though coming before is much more common).
Here’s a parallel usage from Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar”:
Free from the bondage you are in, Messala:
The conquerors can but make a fire of him;
For Brutus only overcame himself,
And no man else hath honour by his death.
He is not saying that Brutus did nothing except overcome himself. He is saying that only Brutus overcame himself (i.e., by suicide). Nobody else conquered him; he alone could conquer himself.
This placement is grammatically entirely valid, though it is less familiar to modern readers. For that reason it can potentially be confusing, and that may well be good reason to avoid such usage. But I do not agree that it is wrong.
Iambic pentameter has a lot to answer for….
(And, https://www.quotes.net/show-quote/9922 )
FWIW, I had the same thought about the placement of “only” in the Beach Boys’ song.
The phrase “there are” is difficult to say, apparently. Introducing “There’s.”
“There are many errors in grammar on TicToc.”
That is too hard to say … Instead:
“There’re many errors in grammar on TicToc.”
But that is even harder to say!
Resolution of the demos:
“There’s many errors in grammar on TicToc.”
That sounds bad to me, but my wife points out that “il y a” in French is always written in the singular, and I do not complain. (Evidently the same is true of “hay” in Spanish, and I do not complain because I do not know any Spanish.)
True, but the literal meaning is different, i.e. “he has there”. Compare the German “es gibt”, “it gives”. Grammatically, the object of those constructions can be singular or plural.
Yes, I think that is right. The subject of the offending sentence is “many errors,” not “there,” whereas the subject of “a” is “il.” That said, tho, “there is” is beginning to take on a function like “il y a,” so we had better get used to it.
[Note: the context for my post was for English.]
The easy way to expose the ugly:
“Wait, sorry, my phone glitched. Did you say ‘there is many errors’ a moment ago?”
God, if only I hadn’t gotten sucked into reading all these replies! Jerry only could get us riled up about such trivia… (Thanks to Jerry, we have Robert Woolley’s excellent observation). Grammar will only continue to go down the tubes, as people read ever less and less.
Fewer and fewer!!
🙂
I have noticed that the younger generations now use “whenever” where my generation used simply “when”. E.g. “Whenever I went to the store, …” instead of “when I went to the store, …”
Not just the younger generation. The great Scottish climber and author Bill Murray (no, not that one) frequently wrote ‘whenever’ instead of ‘when’. A typical sentence would have been along the lines: “Whenever Dunn arrived, we uncoiled the rope and moved up to the next stance”. His best book, Mountaineering in Scotland, was written (twice) in PoW camps and published in 1947.
I remember a class in which the following sentence was used:
I hit him in the eye yesterday.
“Only” can be placed anywhere in the sentence, to change the meaning.
I taught middle school English for 20 years and I’ve never heard that one. You made me LOL for real.
Great example, Joe!
“God only knows” is an American idiom. Are we not exempting idioms from pecksniffery anymore? Sure, the phrase is grammatically incorrect, but that is what makes it glorious.
This topic could generate many examples that annoy us. I remember we used to have arguments about “like” versus “as” (Winston cigarettes, for example), but having a conversation where the speaker inserts “like” in nearly every sentence is a pet peeve for me. Like is it for you too?
“God solely knows” works for me. And “I, exclusively, ate a donut, but only one donut.”
In the sentence “he only ate one donut,” the word “only” is universally understood to modify not just the verb but everything in the verbal clause “ate one donut.” Substitute a different adverb, and this meaning becomes even more clear. For example, “he knowingly ate the worm in the apple.” Everyone would understand this sentence to mean that he knew he was eating the worm, not just that he “knowingly ate” something.
This post only is reason enough to subscribe.
The First Dog on the Moon cartoon strip occasionally has grammatical discussion of things people think we shouldn’t do. See the 6 June cartoon this year, lots of complaints about “literally” when it means figuratively, and “a bit of rain” in forecaster talk.
I think a more serious problem with “only pay for what you need” is that it is the very essence of insurance that you do not know what you need. But I doubt they’d stay in business saying “only pay for what it turns out you needed.”
The need is to manage future risk, right now, not after it’s too late. Benefiting from non-rational aspects of human psychology, insurance companies, like casinos, make large profits. (Who do you think pays for those impressive skyscrapers?)
It’s non-rational to buy fire insurance on your house, Barbara? That’s a hedge, not a bet, so not like a casino gamble at all. The last thing you want is a payout on any insurance contract. Even if I know the fire insurance company in my market is getting monopolistic rents, it’s not rational to go naked just to “show them!”
I’ll grant you that dental insurance seems non-rational at first blush. It’s really just pre-paid cleaning, with some vigorish added on top to keep the investors happy at Sun Life. (Which I am one. So employers, don’t cancel your mandatory workplace dental insurance. I like the dividends.) It’s a good bet for people with rotten teeth, which is why it has to be mandatory for everyone at the firm or for all the taxpayers. So it’s more a case of rationally coercive behaviour to protect the company from adverse selection, not non-rational at all. Employees with good teeth would rationally opt out if they could.
Health insurance (private or public) does encourage the consumption of medical services that many people would be willing to do without, were it not for the insurance making it free, or nearly free. Whether this is rational societal behaviour I will leave for others.
I am not implying that insuring against risks is irrational per se, but that non-rational aspects of our psychology can be employed (some would say exploited) to gain extra (some would say excess or rent-seeking) profits. I have further details if you want them.
(And FWIW, I expect I feel at least as positive towards capitalism as you do.)
Some US states require drivers to have certain types of car insurance. In California, for example, they must carry liability insurance. A driver can choose to carry only the minimum amount of insurance required by law.
What I don’t understand is why this is supposed to be something special. Surely other insurance companies don’t make customers pay for coverage they don’t want?
No doubt we’re just supposed to enjoy the silly Emu and Doug playlets and not think too carefully about the tag line.
I appreciate your precision in the use of only. I try to use it that way, too, when I am writing carefully. You’re right. If it’s misplaced it can be misunderstood especially without emphasis or oral cues to make it clear. And once it’s written down there is no recalling it. When someone misplaces “only” I suspect he didn’t think carefully about what he wrote, just wrote down how he talks.
Nonetheless in casual speech, “God only knows” and “I only ate one donut” are idiomatic and unlikely to be confused with their alternative meanings. Even if the second sentence were written, “I ate only one donut”, it’s still not clear whether the speaker is fishing for praise that he ate just one of several donuts available, and maybe he forwent the Nanaimo bars, too, or is asking for forgiveness about his lack of stamina because all he had for breakfast was one stale donut, some other sod having eaten all the Nanaimo bars. The listener would have to hear the preceding conversation to get the meaning. In either case it’s clear that the speaker ate one and only one donut but the reason we care about it is we want to know the conflict and motivation in the story. If we didn’t care, we wouldn’t need “only” at all (as Dr. Brydon suggests.)
Somewhere way back when I learned in creative writing:
“The Queen died. Then the King died,” isn’t a story.
“The Queen died. Then the King died, of grief.” Now that’s a story!
Not the first person to agree with me: https://www.obsmag.org/issues/published/2016/08/1253.PDF (see p. 194), which refers to https://www.obsmag.org/issues/published/2016/04/1251.PDF (p. 100), though I’ve mentioned it often elsewhere.
I can’t recall ever hearing a misplaced “only” give rise to misunderstanding in conversation. Context and intonation are part of conversation, too.
“Correct” speech is that which is understood as the speaker intended it to be understood, whether that be to convey meaning or social status.
Writing? Different world, or at least it used to be before text messaging and social media posts. I still text in paragraphs, and I despise it when people send me half a dozen rapid texts, simulating speech, and totaling no more than one or two dozen words. Of course, they despise paragraphs. If only we could all agree.
How about a cashier telling you to have an “awesome day”
Or about a rugby commentator telling as “it was an awesome game”?
Where awesome means: extremely impressive or daunting; inspiring awe: from a rugby match?
Taught at some English schools (long ago):
Only the bishop gave the bear the banana
The only bishop gave the bear the banana
The bishop only gave the bear the banana
etc
Danny has already cleverly referenced two of my pet hates – “between you and I, I could care less”. Another, for me, is the incorrect use of the dangling phrase, e.g., ‘old and decaying, the committee decided to demolish the mansion’. I also think it’s important to use the correct technical term for things. Cement floor, cement wall, cement path are all incorrect. Cement is the ingredient, concrete is the end product. Not a grammar error, I know.
Ha. That drives concrete workers nuts.
And presumably also cement-plant workers.
On further reflection, agreeing with comment #1 here, I’m now electrified by the world-wide affirmation that God only knows one thing.
Makes it much easier to be athiest.
Not a grammar issue but I find the use of the word “very” very annoying. It’s vague, imprecise and useless. But that’s just my opinion.
The “Only pay for what you need” line has bothered me since they started using it. Glad to see somebody else feels the same.
A bit of writing advice I read long ago: any time you are planning to write “It was very ______,” think of a single word that means the same thing and use that. Instead of “very loud,” use “deafening.” It is more expressive than the bland “very loud.” Many people use “very” or similar words such as “quite” when they aren’t needed. The film “Sophie’s Choice” has a line “I have to warn you – – my brother is quite insane.” “Insane” would have been enough; you wouldn’t say”He is mildly insane.”
Out came the matador
Who must have been potted or
Slightly insane, but who looked rather bored
— Thomas A Lehrer, In Old Mexico
My “thing” is apostrophes which are only used for missing letters or possession. As “its” for possession and “it’s” for a missing “i” demonstrates, the missing letter rule trumps possession. In any case, my personal pet peeves is with years. I see 1960’s all the time when the context is during the years of 1960-69 rather than possessed by 1960. Just write 1960s and be done. The other bothersome place – for which I don’t have an ideal solution – is when talking about grades. So-and-so received straight As. [instead of A’s]. Eeks, a bit awkward but okay. But what if all of so-and-so’s grades were of the A- variety. A-s might be read as all A grades or all A- grades. Solutions welcome. [My working solution is to say that so-and-so received all A grades.
From my dusty Harbrace College Handbook (5th edition, 1962), section 15d:
HTH
Somebody could, if they wanted to, clarify the correct use of the word “myself.” I always thought it was used as an indirect object: “I (subject) bought a book (direct object) for myself (indirect object).” But it is commonly used in other ways. Statements like “I’ll do it myself.” break that rule but are apparently acceptable. How about “The article was written by John and myself.” Should that be “John and me” ? But “It was written by me” sounds wrong. I could use clarification.
From Harbrace, section 19i:
“It was written by me” is correct. It sounds wrong — weak and flabby — because it uses the passive voice. The active voice — “I wrote it.” “John and I wrote the article.” — answers both issues.
I think people are just afraid to use “me”, probably because as children we are taught that “Me and him went to the store” is incorrect. So they say, “between you and I” and they use “myself” when “me” would suffice. Pace Harbrace, I would say, even colloquially or jocularly, “He allowed my brother and me to go home.” “Myself” does no work there.
In the construction, “I’ll do it [by] myself”, “myself” is just emphasizing “I”, another way of saying “I’ll do it without your help” or “Only I will do it.”
Hi Leslie, I have a friend so afraid to say “me” that he accidently uses “I” correctly as he is butchering sentence.
“Him and I went fishing.”
“Him and me” would have burst his aorta, and “He and I” was on a scroll in a galaxy far away.
I found out later through careful fishing of my own … he simply likes the sound of “himini.” He can’t get that tune out of his head.
I always correct people when they wish me “a happy belated birthday”. It should be “a belated happy birthday”. My birthday isn’t belated. It’s still on the same date that it’s always been on since my birth. It is the happy birthday wish that is belated. That’s one of my pet peeves.
I am getting annoyed with the abuse of the ready-made expression “going forward”. This can easily be replaced by a more specific clauses, such as, “in the future”, “next year”, “when you take office”, in the next world championship”. As it is frequently the case, the expression is used because the speaker does not want to make the effort to design a phrase specifically for the occasion.
I am perpetually bothered by sentences that misuse quantifiers and negation. Consider an item like this, which might appear on a sign in a paint store: “All of our colors are not available”. That means, of course, that none of their colors are available, whereas they intended to say, “Not all of our colors are available”. Compare, “All Americans do not approve of Trump”. Really, not a one? That would be a great day, but it ain’t gonna happen. In the meantime, not all Americans approve of Trump, which is the best we can get.
The problem being, English is a bastard language, based, crudely, on Saxon, German, French, and Latin, with a smidgen of Gaulish tossed in for good confusion. American English is even more of a bastardization of the British English. Current English has all 4 language syntaxes, and a lot of it is German. Plus, American English adds in Spanish (Castilian, Mexican, Spanglish and pidgin). So, to paraphrase Mark Twain, “Anyone who can only think of one way to [create a sentence] obviously lacks imagination.”