Recently I did an exercise on hard and hardly with some Upper-intermediate students. They didn't have many problems with when to use which, but the question came up of where hardly should go in a sentence like this with any, anybody etc: before the verb, or before the noun (phrase) or pronoun.
- You've eaten hardly any toast.
- You've hardly eaten any toast.
- I know hardly anybody here.
- I hardly know anybody here.
and I confess I was temporarily lost for an 'official' answer, although I suspected that both were possible. And that indeed turned out to be the case. But I became rather interested in this question of position, and decided to try and find out a bit more.
