“Hopefully” is not the same as “I hope.” What’s the difference?
“Hopefully she will arrive on time,” exclaimed Aunt Ruth.
“How do you know that?” asked I, feeling somewhat obstreperous.
“How do I know what?” Aunt Ruth queried.
“How do you know that she will arrive in a hopeful manner?” I clarified, secretly joyful at the look of confusion that had settled on her furrowed brow.
“I said nothing of the sort,” remarked Aunt Ruth, raising her voice slightly but trying hard to not sound overly exasperated.
“My dear aunt,” I said in the most condescending tone I could muster, “You most certainly did. You said that hopefully she will arrive on time. Hopefully is an adverb, and in your sentence hopefully modifies the verb arrive. To arrive hopefully means to arrive in a hopeful manner.”
“Well, I meant that I hope she will arrive on time,” muttered Aunt Ruth, looking around the room as though trying to find someone else with whom to converse. There was no one else.
“So you meant to say, ‘I hope she will arrive on time.’”
“Well, what I said means the same thing.”
“It does not. What should she feel hopeful about when she arrives?”
“I, uh, I don’t know,” declared my confused aunt.
“Perhaps she will be hopeful that you won’t give her fruitcake this year. Perhaps she will be hopeful that you won’t drool on her during dinner.”
“You’re the one who drools, remember?” she countered.
“Oh, right,” I admitted. “But really, you don’t know if she will arrive in a hopeful manner; therefore you can’t say she will arrive hopefully.”
“So what can I say then?” Aunt Ruth asked, more or less admitting my correctness.
“You can say you are hopeful she will arrive on time. You hope she will not be late.”
“And when can I use hopefully?”
“My dear aunt, you use hopefully when you refer to doing something in a hopeful manner. Perhaps you hopefully planted a persimmon seed in your yard; that is, when you planted the seed you were feeling hopeful that a persimmon tree would result.”
“So can I say, ‘Hopefully I invited you to dinner tonight?’”
“And why,” I asked, “Would you say that? Why would you be hopeful when you invited me to dinner?”
“My dear nephew,” she explained, “When I invited you for dinner I was feeling hopeful that you would not lay an egg on my head like you did for that silly article you wrote last week.”
She raised one eyebrow and gave me her best shot at an evil eye, but a moment later she broke into laughter.
“So hopefully you wrote this piece,” Aunt Ruth stated. “You were feeling hopeful that it would be useful to the readers.”
“I hope so!”
Knock! Knock! Knock!
“Is that she?” Aunt Ruth asked.
Hopefully, I replied, “I hope.”
Aunt Ruth stared at me for a long moment before hitting me over the head with a frying pan.
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Your poor aunt Ruth! Fun English lesson though 
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