“if it indeed is“ or ”if it is indeed"?

Question

I got confused on where should I put the word "indeed" in my sentence.

I have a sentence like:

I think this apple is red, and if it indeed is, then we should eat it.

I feel really uncomfortable with "indeed" over there. But I don't want to delete it since I want to somehow point out "indeed"...

Any instructions? Thank you!

Answer 1

The positioning of indeed in the phrase "if it is" is fairly flexible. The following Ngram shows the occurrences of "indeed if it is", "if indeed it is", "if it indeed is", and "if it is indeed":

I'm not saying that all of them are correct, but "if indeed it is" and "if it is indeed" seem to be the clear winners.