"I only spent half a semester with her, and a lot of that time was in the darkroom with her people." - Mary-Kate Olsen, in Australian Harper's Bazaar, about her internship with photographer Annie Leibovitz

Mary-Kate has made a common error in modifier placement. Her use of "only" before the verb "spent" means that all she did was spend time with Annie. It means that she did not eat, sleep, or develop pictures in the darkroom; she only spent time with Annie. While it is easy to understand that Mary-Kate is stressing that her internship was short, the syntax of her sentence does not express her intended meaning. Move "only" closer to the words it modifies to reflect what she was trying to say.

"I spent only half a semester with her, and a lot of that time was in the darkroom with her people."

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