In the following examples:
A: Would you know if a shop was a woman's or man's only by looking at the clothes?
B. Would you know if a shop was a woman's or man's by only looking at the clothes?
Is there a difference in meaning? If so, what is it?
Which is preferred (i.e. 'more correct')?
Best Answer
Their meaning is usually the same, and both are equally natural. You can also say "by looking only at the clothes" and "by looking at only the clothes", and those are also natural.
The meanings can be different, because phrases with only are often syntactically ambiguous: only could apply to more than one part of the sentence, so it's not clear which part is in question. Only usually applies to the first thing after it, but it can also apply to the last thing before it instead:
This sounds hopelessly ambiguous, but often the difference doesn't matter, or only one interpretation makes sense. In this sentence, only (looking at the clothes) is the most likely interpretation, so the ambiguity isn't a problem.
(However, "...by looking at the only clothes" means something very different: it implies that there aren't any other clothes, and that this is noteworthy. (Maybe you expected more clothes. So this won't work for this sentence.)