Certain sets of words in the English language tend to confuse people. I have found the following to be among them:
IMPORTANT / IMPORTANTLY
The grammatical difference between these two words is that important is an adjective used to describe a noun or pronoun while importantly is an adverb used to describe a verb, an adjective, or another adverb.
CORRECT: Galileo made important contributions to science in the seventeenth century.
ALSO CORRECT: Galileo importantly contributed to man’s knowledge of the universe in the seventeenth century.
The confusion for us writers (and speakers) arises mainly in relation to the phrase more important/importantly. If you are using the phrase to mean “what is more important is that,” then the proper word to use would be important.
INCORRECT: More importantly, the issue has safety ramifications as well as economic ones.
CORRECT: More important, the issue has safety ramifications as well as economic ones.
INCORRECT: Senator Smith spoke more important on the subject than did Senator Jones.
CORRECT: Senator Smith spoke more importantly on the subject than did Senator Jones.
NOTE: It may help to think whether you could use your same more important/importantly phrase if you were saying “this [whatever it is that you are talking about] is more important than that [of which you were just speaking previously]. In such a case, the proper phrase would be more important. In the vast majority of cases where more important/importantly is used as an introductory comment, the correct phrase to use will be “more important.”
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