A FRIENDLY warning to English speakers and writers: Never allow 'only' to go haywire.

The word 'only' is easily the most movable, most easily misplaced modifier in English. In any of its three roles as adjective, adverb, or conjunction, 'only' can effortlessly flit from place to place, creating as many meanings as the number of positions it perches upon in the sentence. It is, in a word, the ultimate floating quantifier, either intensifying or diminishing the semantic degree of the nouns or verbs it modifies, neatly linking one clause to another of its kind, but when badly positioned ruins an otherwise well-thought-out and well-crafted piece of English writing.