Editing Tips—The Wandering Only Our editors explain the
misplaced "only" In part one of our Editing Tips series, we
dealt with the active and passive voice, explaining how to
identify the passive voice and how to avoid overusing it. We
then provided tips on how to properly make comparisons,
reminding writers to not make their readers infer or guess what
is being compared. Now we will discuss what we call the
wandering or misplaced "only," which, although common and
usually understood in everyday casual speech, is often confusing
and has no place in formal or academic writing. Catch that
"only" before it starts wandering This one simple editing tip
will help to clarify your writing immensely and make it sound
tighter and more professional than before. Consider the sentence
"Bob only ate two apples." Is it the writer's intent to
emphasize that Bob didn't throw the apples or juggle them, but
only ate them? Probably not; the writer likely means that Bob
ate only two apples, not three or four. Thus, the meaning of