AP allows "hopefully"

I hesitate to post anything so controversial as this, but it's a triumph of usage over rules.
Alicia

Less is more. Rinse and repeat.

Re: doubling predicates without and and other cute prose tricks: If it's effective, it's good. I think it isn't necessary most of the time, and the writer needs to consider whether it's necessary here-- because if there's a grammatical break and the editor deems it unnecessary, there it goes. Out, out, damned break!

Less is more. "When it is absolutely necessary" is the amount any "clever" formation should be used-- only when it adds far, far more than breaking grammar detracts.

I don't think it NEVER works. But I do think the more a writer uses such formations, the less effect it has (beyond annoying). In fact, if you want such a formation to have an actual effect, you should never use it except the two or three times in a book it works. Maybe more than two or three times... as I said, it can be effective in conveying fast, simultaneous action. But if a writer uses it whenever there are two actions, then the reader will have no way of knowing that this moment is different, that these are simultaneous, not sequential or causal, actions.

Sometimes, I think, writers fall in love with certain constructions and forget why they exist, and use them as if they are in fact the standard.
Alicia