... and be prepared patiently to debate...

[clauclauclaudia]

I hate the "no split infinitives" rule. It's no part of my internalized grammar, but every so often I encounter someone, usually a British someone, who abides by it, and it confuses me. I think they're tweaking the word order to topicalize or emphasize some part of the sentence, and I'm halfway to analyzing what that might be before I realize, oh, they're just doing things differently to avoid splitting infinitives.

I was very very sad when I realized that what I thought were some quirky turns of phrase by Douglas Adams were nothing more than him hewing to the "no split infinitives" rule. A little bit of imagined cleverness, gone.

Comments

[quietann.livejournal.com]

could you give me an example of a split infinitive?

[clauclauclaudia]

... to boldly go where no-one has gone before!

The un-split way is "... boldly to go where..."

[quietann.livejournal.com]

ewwwww. I so do not understand the "no split infinitives" rule, then!

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

It's one of those stupid rules that happened when a bunch of "scholars" decided to impose Latin grammar rules on English. All verbs are single words in Latin, including the infinitive form, unlike the two-word construction "to $FOO" that's used in English. Hence the "no split infinitives" rule. You *can't* split an infinitive in Latin, so these "scholars" reasoned that one should be unable to do so in English as well.

[lil-brown-bat.livejournal.com]

Thanks for explaining that. I always wondered about the rationale for that rule.

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

*bow* you're welcome. :-)

[coraline]

well, i might say "to go boldly where no one..." which is much less awkward.

[emmacrew.livejournal.com]

This is what I get for commenting before reading the other comments... :-)

[emmacrew.livejournal.com]

"To go boldly..." seems a bit less clunky.

[wdomburg.livejournal.com]

There are still people who take that "rule" seriously? Sheesh.

[whitebird.livejournal.com]

It could have been Douglas Adams' editor who did the un-splitting.

[jcgbigler.livejournal.com]

You have to always split your infinitives. If they're longer than 16", you won't be able to easily fit them into your sentences. Last fall, I had to painstakingly split an entire cord of infinitives. It was hard work, and it was so cold outside that I had to frequently take coffee breaks.

The next day, I had to dutifully make an appointment with my chiropractor, in order to at all be able to effortlessly walk the next day. To even think of splitting all those infinitives makes me tired enough to just fall asleep!

[lil-brown-bat.livejournal.com]

Last fall, I had to painstakingly split an entire cord of infinitives. It was hard work, and it was so cold outside that I had to frequently take coffee breaks.

Dude, that's a feature, not a bug. As us rural types like to say, "Infinitives warm you twice."

[pastwatcher]

Well, maybe his sentences are in fact /clever/ ways not to split an infinitive...
I don't know, I like Latin grammar in some applications; but splitting infinitives is an interesting aspect of English that should probably be allowed because of that and for the sake of preserving possible meanings of sentences, even if I always think of it as making compound verbs.

[brooding-soul.livejournal.com]

Best. Icon. Ever.