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Where should I place the word easily — before or after edit and share your bookmarks?

Do you want to edit and share your bookmarks easily?

or

Do you want to easily edit and share your bookmarks?

Context: Promotion text or a kind of slogan for an online service.

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  • 1
    Can you please specify the context of your statement, because it's not making much sense to me right now.
    – Sayan
    Dec 13, 2012 at 13:40
  • They are different in some way semantically. The first sentence is talking about the easy of doing something (here, editing and sharing bookmarks). The other talks about editing and sharing bookmarks (incidentally in an easy way). There's a missing preposition in the second sentence, you must edit it.
    – Kris
    Dec 13, 2012 at 15:21
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    Off-topic: Writing advice. Now if you were asking about how moving 'easily' in the sentence changes the meaning of the sentence, there might be a valid ELU question in there somewhere.
    – Lynn
    Dec 13, 2012 at 21:21

2 Answers 2

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Your second sentence is was missing the particle to, which is needed. So there are in fact three choices:

  1. Do you want to edit and share your bookmarks easily?
  2. Do you want to easily edit and share your bookmarks?
  3. Do you want easily to edit and share your bookmarks?

(1) and (2) are easily understood, although there are those who don't like split infinitives where to is separated from edit, so that one might be a second choice.

(3) is the pedant's version and best avoided altogether; if you say it, it's fairly easy to make easily to edit into a single phrase (so it's not want easily). However, it's not obvious when reading it.

Put easily at the end, where it will apply to both bookmark operations, be understandable and create a fluid sentence. [Edit: Just what's required for an advertising leader question.]

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  • Adverb placement is the messiest part of English grammar.
    – John Lawler
    Dec 13, 2012 at 16:31
  • Do you want to boldly go?
    – mplungjan
    Dec 14, 2012 at 10:23
  • @mplungjan Well after forty years I still think that would have been better as "Boldly to go where no man has gone before," for a number of reasons, and it has come up here before. (Although that must have been in comments, I can't find it now)
    – Andrew Leach ♦
    Dec 14, 2012 at 10:36
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Easily is an adverb of manner, and such adverbs are typically found at the end of the clause in which they occur.

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