Grimer Girl here, I'm Mignon Foggedy and this week I have a quick and dirty tip about

the difference between important and importantly, and a meeting middle about words and the years

in which they're born.

On to the tip.

You may occasionally hear or read an objection to the phrase more importantly.

You can ignore it unless you're writing a cover letter or some other document where

you'll be judged without the chance to defend yourself.

More important and more importantly are both grammatically acceptable and have been

used for decades.

It's unclear which one came first.

A Google N-gram search, which shows how often words are used in published books that have

been scanned by Google, shows more important as much older and more popular.

And the Merriam Webster Dictionary of English usage says more importantly as older, and

Gardner's modern English usage says more importantly is fully standard and at least as popular

as more important.

The Oxford English Dictionary supplement calls more important a kind of sentence adjective,

and more importantly a kind of sentence adverb.

When they say more importantly as a kind of sentence adverb, they mean it's like thankfully

and fortunately when they come at the beginning of a sentence.

They aren't modifying a specific word in the sentence but rather the entire sentence.

If you write thankfully we didn't run out of guacamole, you're thankful for the entire

sentiment of the rest of the sentence.

...