Be careful how you use the word only. Poor placement of this little modifier can confuse the reader and twist the meaning of a sentence.
“He only wrote three songs” could be taken to mean he alone wrote three songs or, alternatively, that he wrote three songs and did nothing more with them (i.e., he didn’t record or perform them).
The meaning would be clear if, instead, you wrote “He wrote only three songs.” With this positioning of only, it is plain that you’re saying the totality of his work as a songwriter is just three songs.
A recent CBC News article on a species of aster found in Canada’s North had this somewhat ambiguous sentence: “Only an estimated 130,000 stems have been counted in all, with a population that seems only to thrive in the presence of calcium deposits by the park’s hot springs.” What more could be expected of a plant species, other than thriving? The sentence would be better with the second “only” placed after “thrive.”
The article’s next sentence is also problematic: “There are 63 or so thermal springs in Nahanni Park, but the Nahanni aster has only been found in six.” So that readers don’t puzzle over what is meant by only being found, the sentence’s “only” should be placed before “six.” Where has the aster been found? At only six thermal springs.
The key here is to place the word next to, or as close as possible to, the word or phrase to which it applies. A little care in placement of this little word will go a long way toward clarity.
Addendum: Writing about “only” reminded me of the phrase “one of the only,” which I’ve always found irksome. “That’s one of the only jackets left” seems wrong without a number before jackets. The writer should be saying it’s “one of the only four jackets left,” for example.
But should “one of the only” be so irksome to me? After some reflection and a bit of research, I suppose it is defensible as a widely accepted idiom.
An idiom is essentially a phrase that has a meaning that doesn’t match up with what its parts mean. You might say “up in the air” to mean undecided, for example. English has a ton of idioms, and I suppose “one of the only” can be accepted among them. Besides, it has been pointed out that the phrase has been in use for centuries.
So, OK, “one of the only” isn’t wrong. I would, however, advise against using the phrase in most writing. Say something like “one of only a few” or “one of the few” instead. Picky readers are less likely to find either of those phrases irksome.