Lamentably, this controversy has risen from the grave.

Interestingly, there is a whole group of adverbs which fill the same function, namely to describe the speaker’s feelings about the subsequent statement.

Strangely, prescriptivists seem to ignore all of these except

Oddly, poor maligned “hopefully”.

Unsurprisingly, most people refuse to be deprived of such a useful term, yet

Sadly, grammar mavens proclaim their arbitrary rules

Luckily, opposing voices arise and

Happily, the forces of common-sense seem to be gaining ground, so

Hopefully, we will soon make an end of this prescriptivist nonsense.

Like mad King Canutes trying to hold back the tide, these prescriptivist Cassandras hurl their false prophecies of linguistic chaos, while, as inexorably as Frankenstein’s footprints, change comes upon them.

A D.J. on the local classical station uses “momentarily” to mean “soon”, not just one chord from Cesar Franck’s symphony now, but the whole thing in a little while.

The entire “hopefully” solecism could be neatly searched and replaced with “happily”, were we all still of a certain seventeenth century mindset.

I understand that “elitist” usually carries a negative connotation these days, but I don’t intend any such connotation and I’m certainly not decrying anything. Many social groups police their boundaries, and language is a common means of doing so. Like some other commenters, I hadn’t paid proper attention to the fact that the page in question is a writer’s style guide, so I drew the wrong conclusion and imagined that somebody was attempting to dictate to the wider audience of readers: As a writer’s guide it seems absolutely reasonable to me. Even the use of solecism (“a socially awkward or tactless act” according to WordNet) strikes me as appropriate: the authors seek only to regulate The Economist’s writers, a group for which they clearly set the bounds of polite discourse.

It’s not as if the words are unfamiliar or subject to different interpretations, it’s just that the speaker is not considering the words they are using. I’ve always thought that it must be very confusing to those who haven’t been exposed to it regularly.

“Exercises such as this one are both useful and arrogant”

I was hoping he was making a joke. Because I think creating a style guide is a little arrogant. But its also useful. Just because some words are slowly losing the precision of their meaning, does not mean that a good writer cannot reclaim that precision through consistent, accurate usage. In general, I believe this encourages readers to appreciate the particular meanings of words and can lead to better communication. Part of the challenge of a style guide is to decide between meanings that are lost to history and those that can still be reclaimed. A good style guide is carefully concerned with this issue and not overly obsessed with the past.

To disregard style guides altogether is to deny the existence of ‘good writing’. This is to say that the most appropriate writing is just whatever is average. But a good writer, considering the current usage of words and their history, can more effectively communicate his ideas, partly by deviating from the lowest common denominator.

I personally am a bit saddened that “fantastic” and “awesome” have become synonyms, losing all their original flavor. That doesn’t stop me from using them as superlatives, and it doesn’t mean I yell at anyone who uses them in their more generic sense. I don’t think this site, or any style guide for that matter, is meant as a condemnation.