Grammar Girl here.

Today's topic is whether it's okay to start a sentence with the word hopefully, Paul

from Long Island in New York called the voicemail line with this comment.

I was wondering maybe you could do a podcast devoted to the misuse of the phrase or of the

word, hopefully, it's an adverb but nobody uses it that way and I drive a lot of people

crazy with that one that's a big pet peeve of mine, maybe you could drive even more people

crazy with it than I do.

I'm probably going to make everyone crazy with this topic because I think it should be

okay to start a sentence with hopefully, but I'm still going to tell you not to do it.

The problem Paul's talking about is when people start a sentence with hopefully, instead

of, I hope.

If you've heard me give a radio interview, you've probably heard me self correct this problem.

Here's what a self correction sounds like.

This one is from last week's business week podcast.

Have a community, hopefully, we hope for every single organization.

I don't mean to pick on the speaker here, as I said, I do this a lot.

I just happened to hear the business week reporter right when I needed the clip.

I don't know what's going on in her head when she does this, but here's what's going

on in my head when it happens to me.

Oh no, no, no, I started a sentence with hopefully, aboard, aboard.

Here's the deal.

The traditional use of hopefully, which goes back to at least the 1600s, is to mean in

...