Where should the words 'In real life' be put?

Which of these sentences is correct?

  1. In real life, do we have anything close to the robots showed in Westworld?

  2. Do we, in real life, have anything close to the robots showed in Westworld?

  3. Do we have anything close to the robots showed in Westworld, in real life?


"In real life" is a prepositional phrase modifying the verb have. Typically, you will want such modifiers to be placed as close as possible to the word they modify.

(Edited) Sentence 1 is standard English, and would work just as well as #4.

Sentence 2 works.

Sentence 3 produces great dissonance, as the phrase is placed very far from the word it modifies, and should be avoided.

Sentence 4 is by far the best choice, as it follows a standard layout for the placement of the modifier. It thus comforts your reader into a pattern he can recognize, whereas atypical constructions such as sentence 1 and 3 risk to create confusion.

Cheers.