TheWritersBag.com

I’ve always been told not to split infinitives. “Go ahead and split hairs, wood and task lists,” they warn you, “but don’t split infinitives.” Granted, the people who go around saying those sorts of things to innocent bystanders need to get a life, but they do have a point.

Of course, these people never take the time to explain what an infinitive actually is. So when they warn you not to split one, you’ll spend the next few days in a vague malaise wondering whether you’re transgressing this law of grammar without knowing it.

Believe me, you never want to be in that situation. So listen up. An infinitive consists of the word “to” plus a verb. The following are all infinitives:

• to go
• to be
• to fly
• to skate
• to fall
• to see

Easy enough. Now let’s tackle the split infinitive. This, too, is easy. A split infinitive is simply an infinitive that has been split by having another word or words sandwiched between the “to” and the accompanying verb. For illustrative purposes, let’s take the six infinitives we just mentioned and turn them into split infinitives….

• to boldly go
• to forever be
• to freely fly
• to aggressively skate
• to tragically fall
• to clearly see

Now let’s fix the foregoing split infinitives ….

• to go boldly
• to be forever
• to fly freely
• to skate aggressively
• to fall tragically
• to see clearly

As with almost all other rules of English, the split infinitive rule is not inviolate. There are times when throwing a split infinitive into a sentence seems to be the right thing to do. Take, for example, the now famous phrase, “… to boldly go where no man has gone before.” Many Star Trek enthusiasts (okay, geeks) are also grammar enthusiasts (okay, nerds). The debate about whether that phrase should have been changed to, “… to go boldly where no man has gone before,” in order to fix the split infinitive, has raged for decades and may never be resolved.

These people also need to get a life.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS