Improving Style Through Syntax, Part 7: Placing Adverbs

The simple adverb only gives writers a lot of trouble. More often than not, they insert it in the wrong position of a sentence. Here is an example from a Liberty Mutual televised advertisement:

Only pay for what you need.

In its present draft, the sentence can be interpreted as you have the sole task of paying; it offers no advantage to you, the customer. Let's reposition only by one word: 

Pay only for what you need.

This sentence now means that you, the customer, have the advantage of paying only for what you need. We can assume this is what Liberty Mutual means.

Look at this final example of only changing meanings based on its position in the sentence:

• Only Helen read the book. (This means no one but Helen read the book.)
• Helen only read the book. (This means Helen made an effort of  nothing but reading the book.)
• Helen read only the book. (This means Helen read nothing but the book.)
• Helen read the only book. (This means no other books were available to Helen.)
• Helen read the book only. (This means Helen chose not to read the other material accompanying the book.)

You can see how careful you have to be with only.

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Read previous posts in this series:

Part 1: Grouping and Dropping Prepositional Phrases

Part 2: Dropping Pronouns for Clarity

Part 3: Dropping Pronouns for Conciseness

Part 4: Avoiding—No, Managing—the Comma Splice

Part 5: Remedying Run-ons
Part 6: Freeing Fragments