adverbs - Position of "now"


What is the difference in meaning between these two sentences?




  1. This feature is now disabled.

  2. This feature is disabled now.




Answer



There's an interesting semantic implication in shifting the position of now.


Consider this:



This feature is now disabled.



One would infer that the feature was probably destined to be disabled and now it has been done.



This feature is disabled now.



One understands that the feature is currently disabled and may at any future time be enabled again.


The real reason is that in the first case, the subject or main reference is the status ('disabled'); in the latter, the context ('now'). Note that the above inferences are drawn based on convention and not grammatical rules.


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