| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. |
A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English. 1996.
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1. Grammar: Traditional Rules, Word Order, Agreement, and Case
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| § 55. scarcely |
| scarcely as negative adverb. Scarcely has the force of a negative and is therefore regarded as incorrectly used with another negative, as in I couldn’t scarcely believe it. For more on this problem, see
double negative and
hardly. | 1 |
| scarcely with a following clause. You should introduce a clause following scarcely with either when or before. The conjunction than is commonly used here, but such use is still considered unacceptable to some people. So you can say The meeting had scarcely begun when (or before) it was interrupted, but you should probably avoid saying The meeting had scarcely begun than it was interrupted. | 2 |
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| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. Copyright © 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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