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Modifiers to the Sentence

Basics

A sentence may be modified by prepositional phrases such as to me, in the house or for Peter, or by adverbs such as already, yesterday or quickly.

Most commonly, these are put at the end of the sentence. They may also come at the start.

But it is extremely unusual to put anything else between the main verb and the object or objects which follow it. People occasionally break this rule, mainly in longer sentences, but in short sentences it really sounds like bad English:

Error Correct form Correct form
**I wrote yesterday a letter. Yesterday I wrote a letter. I wrote a letter yesterday.

SO REMEMBER THIS: If you are not sure where to put a modifier to the sentence, the safe choice is to put it at the end.

Details

Consider the following sentence. It can be broken down into five parts:

Subject auxiliary verb main verb Object prepositional phrase
I have cleaned the floor in the kitchen.

This leaves six spaces into which, it appears, a sentence modifier could be put. However, two of these spaces are not normally used. For this page, I shall refer to the spaces which can be used as 'slots', numbered 1 to 4.

Slot 1 Subject
auxiliary verb Slot 2 main verb
Object Slot 3 prepositional phrase Slot 4
Good I Bad have Good cleaned BAD! the floor Good in the kitchen. Good

This gives us the following correct and wrong possibilities:

Correct (slot 1) Fortunately I have cleaned the floor in the kitchen.
Error **I already have cleaned the floor in the kitchen.
Correct (slot 2) I have already cleaned the floor in the kitchen.
Error **I have cleaned already the floor in the kitchen.
Correct (slot 3) I have cleaned the floor carefully in the kitchen.
Correct (slot 4) I have cleaned the floor in the kitchen already.

With a simple verb, the sentence modifier may come between the Subject and the main verb:

I already cleaned the floor in the kitchen.

I have shown different words in different slots because there is no word which would normally be used in all four slots.

See:
Verbs with one or two objects.

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