When can I say "I use this daily" or "I use this every day"? What about hourly?
Is it correct to say "I will send this hourly"? It seems incorrect, to me.
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1Technically speaking, both versions are valid, and semantically equivalent. But idiomatically people tend to use every hour/day when it's an "adverbial" context ("I read The Guardian every day"), and hourly/daily when it's "adjectival" ("The Guardian is a daily newspaper").– FumbleFingersAug 29, 2013 at 13:08
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@FumbleFingers which of those are more formal ? If I am sending a message to a company , which one should I use?– moudizAug 29, 2013 at 13:53
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1@ moudiz: It's not really a matter of formal/informal. I suggest you take StoneyB's advice and stick to every hour if you're adverbially qualifying how often you will send a report or whatever. No-one will think that's in the least bit odd. But if you're adjectivally modifying what you send, call it an hourly report.– FumbleFingersAug 29, 2013 at 17:35
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3 Answers
Daily, hourly, yearly and the like all started as adjectives, but centuries of use license their use as adverbs, too.
OKI will update this report hourly.
This makes some people uncomfortable, however; so you would probably do better to use them only as adjectives and employ the every construction when you want an adverbial:
OKI will update this report every hour.
What you will often see those uncomfortable people substituting is this construction:
?!I will update this report on an hourly basis.
I implore you not to emulate this pompous and awkward workaround.
answered Aug 29, 2013 at 13:15
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If I talk of school : I go to school daily, I go to school every day. Which one is more correct? Mar 5, 2019 at 12:28
"I use this daily" and "I use this every day" mean pretty much the same thing.
In some contexts, either one could mean exactly once per day, or an unspecified number of times per day. Like if your doctor said, "Take this medicine daily", that would be understood to mean one pill per day. Or if you said, "We update the customer file every day", that would normally be understood to mean once per day. But if you said, "I drink coffee daily" or "I drink coffee every day", that wouldn't necessarily mean just one cup per day, but rather at least one cup every day.
If you said, "I will send this hourly", that means you will send it every hour. So if you send the first one at 9:00, you'll send another at 10:00, another at 11:00, etc.
Daily is kind of formal version of every day.
Every Day ususally is used when you speak, while daily is used in writing.
