All three variations can be found at the end of a sentence in the News on the Web corpus with an unspecified subject and a wildcard inserted for dollar, though the variant with only at the end is much less frequent.
The hits to be found for the least likely variant don't seem particularly ungrammatical, just a little inelegant perhaps.
Then again, there is only one hit for that construction in the Corpus of Contemporary American English, and that one is in a recipe.
The Webster's Dictionary of English Usage has an absurdly long entry on the difference between the first two, with their judgement being "To conclude, we offer these few summary observations. The position of only in standard spoken English is not fixed; ambiguity is prevented by clarifying stress and intonation. In literary English from the 17th century to the present, the placement of only according to the idiom of speech has been freely used; it is still used, especially in prose that keeps close to the rhythms of speech. In current edited prose — especially that for which ample time has been provided for revision — only tends to be used in the orthodox position — immediately before (or sometimes after) the word or words it modifies."
only 1. A correspondent wrote to us in 1986 com- plaining about the
misplacement of the word only in contemporary writing and offering "a
few examples taken mostly from recent news articles" with her
corrections:
"Sara only comes to California under protest." It should read, "Sara comes to California only under protest."
"The flood only kills a few characters." It should read, "The flood kills only a few characters."
"He was only told about his real dad about four years ago." It should read, "He was told about his real dad only four years ago
"I think we will only be pleased when the issue is finally resolved." It should read, "I think we will be pleased only when the
issue is finally resolved."
"A foreigner can only drive a car for one year in England without taking a test." This should read, "A foreigner can drive a car for
only one year in England without taking a test."
A quote from FBI Director William Webster on NBC "Today" show: "They only should be given when the situation is considered really
serious." He should have said, "They should be given only when the
situation is considered really serious."
We should begin by placing this issue in historical perspective.
Thus it is commonly said, 'I only spake three words': when the
intention of the speaker manifestly requires, 'I spake only three
words.' —Lowth 1762
Another blunder, of which the instances are innu- merable, is the
misplacing of the word only. Indeed, this is so common, so absolutely
universal, one may almost say that "only" cannot be found in its
proper place in any book within the whole range of English
literature,—to say nothing of newspapers, maga- zines, and the various
departments of spoken lan- guage —Gould 1867
only: This word, whose correct position depends upon the intention of
the author, is often misplaced —Vizetelly 1906
Only. "He only had one." Say, He had only one, or, better, one only
—Bierce 1909
only Make sure you put it immediately before the word it actually
modifies —Trimble 1975
"Drink Budweiser only for five days.".... If this means we are to
drink no water or beverage other than Bud for five days, it is
correct. Otherwise only is misplaced —Simon 1980
On the matter of the misplaced only, I am as crotch- ety as an old
bear with a thorn in his paw, and I nurse a lasting grudge against
Fowler and Follett because of their indifference —Kilpatrick 1984
We can see that this problem of the misplaced only has been around for
over two centuries. We can also see that writers are held to misplace
it with some frequency. And we will see from the following examples
that the chief mistake is the placing of only between the subject and
the verb or between the auxiliary verb and the main verb—common
locations for many common adverbs.
Who are the writers who misplace only? Hall 1917 calls them "the
standard authors," and cites 104 of them from the 17th through the
19th centuries. Here is a sampler:
. . . I will only add this in the defence of our present Writers —John
Dryden, "Defence of the Epilogue," 1672
. . . follies that are only to be killed by a constant and assiduous
culture —Joseph Addison, The Spectator (in Hall)
Every other author may aspire to praise; the lexicog- rapher can only
hope to escape reproach —Samuel Johnson, Preface to the Dictionary,
1755
I shall only mention one particular of dress —Tobias Smollett, Travels
Through France and Italy, 1766
I set out immediately, with my son, for London, and we only stopped a
little by the way to view Stone- henge on Salisbury Plain —Benjamin
Franklin, Autobiography, 1788
. . . but which through a stupid blunder .. . only did cost one
American dollar and a half —Henry Adams, letter, 15-17 May 1859
He only does it to annoy, Because he knows it teases —Lewis Carroll,
Alice in Wonderland, 1865, in Cyrus Day, Word Study, December 1962
We see cherubs by Raphael, whose baby-innocence could only have been
nursed in Paradise —Nathan- iel Hawthorne, The Marble Faun, 1860 (in
Hall)
The perfect loveliness of a woman's countenance can only consist in
the majestic peace which is founded in memory of happy and useful
years —John Rus- kin, Sesame and Lilies, 1865 (in Hall)
The endeavor to find the distinctions of Latin gram- mar in that of
English has only resulted in grotesque errors —A. H. Sayce,
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1 lth éd., 1910
I think that Stephen Spender was only attempting to enumerate oil and
water colour pictures and not photographs —T. S. Eliot, letter, 16
Oct. 1963
I'll only stop to fetch the little calf—Robert Frost (in Day, Word
Study) We feel very badly about your only having one tur- key —James
Thurber, letter, Fall 1938
They only opened one bag and took the passports in and looked at them
—Ernest Hemingway (in Day, Word Study) . . . the critics and scholars
(most of them) gave him high marks in Speech when he had only earned
them in Observation —John O'Hara, letter, 17 Feb. 1959
I only got wine by roaring for it —Evelyn Waugh (in Burchfield 1981)
.. . that would only mean that a noble distinction, hard to replace,
had been lost —I. A. Richards, Con- fluence, March 1954
He only planned to keep on going as far as each streetcar would take
him —E. L. Doctorow, Rag- time, 1975
If writers from Dryden to Doctorow have ignored the rule that only
must immediately precede the word it modifies, where did the rule come
from? It seems to have originated with Bishop Lowth in 1762. It was
not directed by Lowth at the placement of only (his mention of only is
in a footnote), but is a rule for adverbs generally:
The Adverb, as its name imports, is generally placed close or near to
the word, which it modifies or affects; and its propriety and force
depend on its position.
Baker 1770 censures the misplacement of only along with that of not
only, neither, and either; there are, he says, "innumerable Instances"
of their wrong placing. Lindley Murray 1795 likewise is addressing a
more gen- eral principle when he cites two instances of misplaced only
(one of which is Baker's example). The narrowing of the rule to only
must have taken place later, in the 19th or 20th centuries. But even
many modern hand- books include words other than only in their discus-
sions: Chambers 1985, for instance, mentions even with only; Scott,
Foresman 1981 adds almost, even, hardly, scarcely, just, and nearly.
But why the disparity between rule and practice? The answer
undoubtedly lies in the rule's foundation: it is based on the
application of logical thinking to written English. The "misplacing"
of only is caused by the oper- ation of idiom in spoken English.
Lowth's original objection to "I only spake three words" depends on
his interpreting only to apply ambiguously to either / or to spake, an
interpretation that would not be possible if the words were spoken.
Prose was not written laboriously in the 18th century; careful and
painstaking revision was, in the main, reserved for poetry. Thus,
18th-century prose was undoubtedly closer to spoken English than it
appears from this distance. We know that Dr. Johnson, who habitually
put such things off until the last minute, dashed off many of his
prose works and never revised them. We should not be surprised,
therefore, that many instances of "misplaced" only can be found in his
prose works.
A rule based on logic that is applied to written English and does not
take into account the natural idiom of speech will create thousands of
"violations" as soon as it is formulated. This plainly has been the
case with the rule for placing only.
If the grammarians and rhetoricians who preached strict adherence to
the placement rule viewed noncom- pliance only as so much more
incorrect English, the dis- parity between rule and practice was seen
by others in a different light. One of the earliest to comment was
Alford 1866:
The adverb only in many sentences where strictly speaking it ought to
follow the verb and to limit the objects of the verb, is in good
English placed before the verb.
Goold Brown 1851 calls Lowth's criticism of "I only spake three
words"—which he found with spake altered to spoke in a later
grammar—hypercritical. Hall 1917 devotes six pages to the subject and
lists 104 authors in over 400 passages in violation of the rule. But
the most trenchant notice of the disparity is taken by Fowler
1926. He begins with a quotation and appends his opinion:
I read the other day of a man who 'only died a week ago', as if he
could have done anything else more striking or final; what was meant
by the writer was that he 'died only a week ago'. There speaks one of
those friends from whom the English language may well pray to be
saved, one of those modern preci- sians who have more zeal than
discretion, & wish to restrain liberty as such, regardless of whether
it is harmfully or harmlessly exercised.
He continues:
For He only died a week ago no better defence is per- haps possible
than that it is the order that most peo- ple have always used & still
use, & that, the risk of misunderstanding being chimerical, it is not
worth while to depart from the natural. Remember that in speech there
is not even the possibility of misunder- standing, because the
intonation of died is entirely different if it, & not a week ago, is
qualified by only; & it is fair that a reader should be supposed
capable of supplying the decisive intonation where there is no
temptation to go wrong about it.
Fowler has his contemporary followers:
To quibble about the position of only when meaning is not at stake is
to waste time —Perrin & Ebbitt 1972
The placement of only in a sentence is a matter of great concern to a
few self-styled purists, but happily not for most speakers and
writers.... The simple fact is that the "rule" about placing only next
to the element modified is honored now more in the breach than in the
observance. Especially in speech, the nor- mal placement of only is
before the verb and this must be considered to be a perfectly
acceptable part of the American idiom —Harper 1985
The placement in speech is well attested:
. . . I once tried to buy such a pair, for myself: but only got the
crushing reply that "slippers of that kind are only worn by ladies"
—Lewis Carroll, letter, 11 Nov. 1896
There was a young man, who had only worked there six weeks —William
Benton, in Studs Terkel, Hard Times, 1970
He only got in three innings' work all spring —Dick Howser, quoted in
New Yorker, 9 Dec. 1985
All these examples that run counter to the rule for what Fowler terms
"orthodox" placement might lead you to suspect, as Harper 1985 does,
that few people use the orthodox placement. Such is not the case,
however. What has happened is that both parties to this dispute have
been at pains to find examples that disagree with the rule; the
prescribers present them for correction, and the rule's critics
present them as evidence that the rule and usage do not match. No
one—at least until com- paratively recent times—has bothered to
collect exam- ples that adhere to the orthodox placement. Such exam-
ples do exist, abundantly:
The Endymion is now waiting only for orders, but may wait for them
perhaps a month —Jane Austen, letter, 1 Nov. 1800
To many women marriage is only this —Mary Webb, The Golden Arrow, 1916
She looked at the body only enough to make sure that it was all over
—Glenway Wescott, Apartment in Athens, 1945
. . . I can only try to explain what was in my mind — Christopher Fry,
Atlantic, March 1953
There is no evil in the atom; only in men's souls — Adlai E.
Stevenson, Speeches, ed. Richard Harrity, 1952
. . . I'd taken it only just in time —Christopher Ish- erwood, in New
World Writing, 1952
. . . maybe we'd have only one more chance —Wil- liam Faulkner, 25
Feb. 1957, in Faulkner in the Uni- versity, 1959
He needed only to suffer —E. L. Doctorow, Rag- time, 1975
Indeed, we spent so little time in bed most of us had only one child
—James Thurber, letter, 24 June 1959
But we can ultimately only guess about Davis — Robert Penn Warren,
Jefferson Davis Gets His Citi- zenship Back, 1980
Bryant 1962 notes that the position of only with respect to the word
or phrase it modifies is not fixed in standard English—especially not
in speech—but in edited written English it is usually placed
immediately before the word or words it modifies. She cites a study of
magazines—presumably American—showing that 84 percent of the onlys
appeared in the orthodox posi- tion—a figure she speculates may be
somewhat height- ened by the strictures of textbook writers or the
pre- ferences of editors. An examination of the citations in the
Merriam-Webster files made in 1982 reached a similar conclusion: in
edited prose only tends to be placed immediately before the word or
words it modifies.
Although no one has searched 18th-century literature for examples of
the orthodox positioning of only, it seems reasonable to suppose that
the orthodox position- ing and the idiomatic speech positioning have
both been in use all along, and that writers have used the orthodox
positioning when it seemed useful to do so. Thus Jane Austen's use of
it in 1800—in a letter.
So what rather looks like an increase in use of the orthodox
positioning may be somewhat illusory if it has, as we conjecture, been
in use all along (note that in some of the examples no other
positioning is likely). Such increase may be due in part to the urging
of the "rule" by editors and textbooks, but it is just as likely that
it is due to the increased prestige of prose as a literary medium.
Prose is certainly considered more worthy of revision and polishing
than it was two centuries ago; the logical positioning of only is
likely to be more desir- able the less the prose resembles spontaneous
speech. Our correspondent's examples are all drawn from journalism or
speech; journalism is prose produced to a deadline—in just the way
Samuel Johnson used to write. There is less time to revise such writ-
ing, and there is correspondingly greater likelihood that such a
writer will use the natural idioms of speech.
To conclude, we offer these few summary observa- tions. The position
of only in standard spoken English is not fixed; ambiguity is
prevented by clarifying stress and intonation. In literary English
from the 17th cen- tury to the present, the placement of only
according to the idiom of speech has been freely used; it is still
used, especially in prose that keeps close to the rhythms of speech.
In current edited prose—especially that for which ample time has been
provided for revision—only tends to be used in the orthodox
position—immediately before (or sometimes after) the word or words it
modifies.
