I know that hopefully discussion is here somewhere, but could somebody please succinctly review it for me again? For example, the pedants say you can't say something like, "Hopefully I will have it by the end of the week," correct?

ha! that second link is great.

hopefully, you'll find this quote from Strunk and White equally helpful:

Hopefully
This once-useful adverb meaning “with hope” has been distorted and is now widely used to mean “I hope” or “it is to be hoped.” Such use is not merely wrong, it is silly.

Agreed that the link is excellent.

But as to the S&W quote, there's is contrary opinion from another excellent Michael, namely Quinion:

In its favour, hopefully conforms to a type of construction that is far from new, is a useful condensation …, and is widely used. It is hard to provide much in the way of a list of objections save that it has become a shibboleth of correctness among conservative grammarians and stylists …. For myself, as you have noticed, I use it when it seems appropriate, untroubled by any potential strictures. That’s because I have a stack of modern style guides ranged at my back, chorusing that it is standard English and that it is both acceptable and accepted.

my S&W comment was, hopefully, patently ironic.

Stephen Pinker delves into this, where he is very annoyed by the language mavens. Most of the excerpt is available in google books.

p 395-396 of the Language Instinct

actually®, we often do use 'sentence adverbs'.

quote:

actually®, we often do use 'sentence adverbs'.

Seriously?

Certainly we do.

Frankly, the whole question is overblown.

Surely you're joking?

Thankfully I got this response to my colleague just in time.

Normally I'd just look this up myself, but I was at work and needed a quick answer.

[Thanks, guys! ]

quote:

Originally posted by tsuwm: my S&W comment was, hopefully, patently ironic.

Sorry about that.