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3 “Earliertoday” is a totally correct way to refer to a point in time between the beginning of the day and the current time. Because it refers to a moment in the past, it can be used with the past tense, as you did in your example. But by putting the "today" at the end, you are making a declaration of time which is odd for the present simple. So, to the answer: I would, in general, use the first construction. Though an exact answer would be dependent on the context of the situation. Nov 20, 2014 ·The 2002 reference grammar by Huddleston and Pullum et al., The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, would consider words like yesterday,today, tonight, and tomorrow as pronouns (specifically, deictic temporal pronouns). Related info is in CGEL pages 429, 564-5. Apr 19, 2011 ·Neither are clauses, but "todayin the afternoon" is grammatical (adverbial phrase of time), while "todayafternoon" is not. I would also suggest "this afternoon" as a more succinct and idiomatic alternative to "todayin the afternoon".
