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“I quickly walked down the street” means something different than “I walked down the street quickly”. The first means that the walk itself was quick, and can imply that the trip down the street was short, easy, perfunctory, etc. The second implies that the act of walking was quick, implying a hurried pace. The two meanings are almost but not quite at odds, mainly because we have the same word for the act of walking as we do for the walk (journey) itself, unlike many languages. We also don’t differentiate something we’re doing now from something we habitually do from something which is a persistent and conscious action, nor do we differentiate something we did from something we finished doing from something we did completely.
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I was trying to mirror how someone would use the word “literally” which is, like my example with “waltzed” to say “I literally waltzed down the street.” I think, “I quickly walked down the street” would mean “I did not hesitate before walking down the street” in more cases than it would mean anything else.
Literally in that sentence, as I said, applies to “waltzed” but probably not to “down” (unless the word “down” is emphasized in speech) and almost certainly not to the street. If I change that to “I literally walked down the street” then we’d all be left guessing that the thing to be taken literally is the word “down” since there would be no reason we could think of to modify “walked” with “literally” when talking about going for a walk down the street (and again, in what sense other than a literal one could we mean “street”?). If “quickly” is applied to “walked won the street” then we already know what a quick walk down the street is like, so we can deal with that. If “literally” is applied to “walked down the street” we are left asking (and immediately subconsciously answering), “What part is literal?”. We need a lot of context to make sense of what people are saying.
But my main point is that in none of these cases would we guess that “literally” applies to “I”, and through that point to say that it doesn’t modify the entire sentence, but rather modifies the words in the sentence, and thus rebutting the “this is written in blue ink” analogy.
Having thought so more, though, I could accept the analogy and make another point: people saying that other people using literally for emphasis “don’t understand what ‘literally’ means” would be akin to someone looking at the sentence “this is written in blue ink” written in black ink and saying, “whoever wrote this doesn’t understand what ‘blue’ means.” That is, it seems an awfully unlikely, unimaginative and uncharitable interpretation of events.
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It can happen. This skit is hilarious, by the way:
So which would you mean?
I guess it doesn’t matter, really. Clearly people are going to use whatever word they want, correct or not, anti-un-dis-irregardless of what us pedants say.
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If someone writes, “I literally pissed myself laughing” on the internet, it’s probably only 50/50 that they even actually laughed, let alone that they urinated.
Speaking of hilarious and of wetting oneself, I can’t give a link right now, but check out Norm MacDonald’s “Dirty Johnny” joke.
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Only if you’re calling Chris Traeger as eloquent as Twain.
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I have to agree with @anon15383236 that impactful is a horrible thing, however. What does an impact fill, anyway?
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So it’s not saying “literally” for emphasis that you object to, but the people who do so?
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Oh, I certainly object to the people, but mostly because they do it.
I think out of internet etiquette I should have been using winky faces or something to show the light-heartedness of my barbs here, but I assume from your stance on “literally” that you would hate that.
In reality I applaud your dislike of the kids these days.
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I knew I could count on you.
Big ol’ hugs!
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The marketing budget, mostly.
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This could only improve role-playing The Grammar Nazi and the Mädchen…
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Slight digression, but poems about language and grammar always remind of this masterpiece by Raymond Chandler, in respose to an over-eager copyeditor (extract follows):
Lines to a Lady With an Unsplit Infinitive
Miss Margaret Mutch she raised her crutch
With a wild Bostonian cry.
"Though you went to Yale, your grammar is frail,"
She snarled as she jabbed his eye.
"Though you went to Princeton I never winced on
Such a horrible relative clause!
Though you went to Harvard no decent larva’d
Accept your syntactical flaws.
Taught not to drool at a Public School
(With a capital P and S)
You are drooling still with your shall and will
You’re a very disgusting mess!"
She jabbed his eye with a savage cry.
She laughed at his anguished shrieks.
O’er the Common he fled with a hole in his head.
To heal it took Weeks and Weeks.
"O dear Miss Mutch, don’t raise your crutch
To splinter my new glass eye!
There ain’t no school that can teach a fool
The whom of the me and the I.
There ain’t no grammar that equals a hammer
To nail down a cut-rate wit.
And the verb ‘to be’ as employed by me
Is often and lightly split.
A lot of my style (so-called) is vile
For I learned to write in a bar.
The marriage of thought to words was wrought
With many a strong sidecar.
A lot of my stuff is extremely rough,
For I had no maiden aunts.
O dear Miss Mutch, leave go your clutch
On Noah Webster’s pants!
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