The phrase "act hardly" is not correct in written English.
It seems to be a confusion between "act hard" and "hardly act."
Example: "He tends to act hard in front of his peers to impress them."
Alternatives: "behave tough" or "put on a tough act."
Yet when Triraksha, desperate for Ashoka to make her son his successor, blinds the rival heir, this horrific act hardly registers in the orchestra music.
The Affordable Care Act hardly changed that fundamental flaw — after its passage, our health-care system became, simultaneously, more government-centered and more market-oriented.
The audiences for most of these acts hardly overlap.
While these disparate acts hardly amount to a clerical uprising and are unlikely to result in change, church scholars note that for the first time in years, groups of priests in several countries are standing with those who are challenging the church to rethink the all-male celibate priesthood.
The Magnitsky act is hardly going to change Russia overnight.
The product, the U.S.A. Freedom Act, was hardly a radical piece of legislation.
Michelle Pfeiffer's Wicked-Witch-of-the-West act is hardly less of a panto turn.
Their attempts at parody and contempt for Gaga, who wanted them as an opening act, can hardly be missed.
The Second Confiscation Act itself hardly merited such vitriol: the absence of any enforcement mechanism or provisions for oversight rendered the act almost completely ineffectual.
They consistently used the appropriate "experiment" to test their object, and babies who hadn't seen them act unusually hardly ever used these "tests" while playing.
"In the absence of certainty," argues David Bloom, "the responsible position is to act conservatively". Hardly anyone is laughing at Malthus anymore.
