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Topic: Split infinitive

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Infinitive

Grammarian

English usage

Preposition

Adverb

Where no man has gone before

Prescription and description

Comparison

English language

Double negative

Latin spelling and pronunciation

Superlative

Latin

Authentic performance

Grammar

	§ 59. split infinitive. 1. Grammar. The American Heritage Book of English Usage. 1996 (via CobWeb/3.1 ... (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-28)
		Split infinitives have been condemned as ungrammatical for nearly 200 years, but it is hard to see what exactly is wrong with saying to boldly go.
		In fact, the split infinitive is distinguished both by its length of use and the greatness of its users.
		Remember too that infinitive phrases in which the adverb precedes a participle, such as to be rapidly rising, to be clearly understood, and to have been ruefully mistaken, are not split and should be acceptable to everybody.
	www.bartleby.com.cob-web.org:8888 /64/C001/059.html (609 words)

	Split infinitive - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-28)
		However, grammarians of the Romance languages do not use the term "split infinitive" to describe the phenomenon, since the preposition is not considered a part of the uninflected infinitive form, and despite the surface-level similarity there are significant syntactical differences between the English and French constructions.
		Split infinitives reappeared in the 18th century and became more common in the 19th.
		Splitting infinitives with negations, as in the phrase "I want to not see you anymore," remains one of the most complicated areas of contention.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Split_infinitive (2744 words)

	SPLIT INFINITIVE. The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. 1993 (via CobWeb/3.1 planetlab2.cs.umd.edu) (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-28)
		A split infinitive consists of the function word to, followed by an adverb (usually an -ly adverb), followed by an infinitive: to happily conclude, to weakly demur, to needlessly suffer.
		The third doesn’t split the infinitive, but unless it’s punctuated as a sentence modifier, it could conceivably be thought to modify instructed rather than to check.
		Today, split infinitives continue to appear often in Standard speech and even in Edited English, especially in sentences where to avoid them would be clumsier and less effective than to use them.
	www.bartleby.com.cob-web.org:8888 /68/76/5676.html (502 words)

	AUE: FAQ excerpt: Split infinitive (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-28)
		No split infinitives are to be found in the works of Shakespeare, Spenser, Pope, or Dryden, or in the King James Version of the Bible.
		Phrases consisting of "to be" or "to have" followed by an adverb and a participle are not split infinitives, and constitute the natural word order.
		The dispute is between those who believe that split infinitives should be avoided when this can be done with no sacrifice of clarity or naturalness, and those who believe that no effort whatever should be made to avoid them.
	www.alt-usage-english.org /excerpts/fxspliti.html (585 words)

	factoids > English > split infinitive (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-28)
		These people betray by their practice that their aversion to the split infinitive springs not from instinctive good taste, but from tame acceptance of the misinterpreted opinion of others; for they will subject their sentences to the queerest distortions, all to escape imaginary split infinitives.
		Those who presumably do know what split infinitives are, and condemn them, are not so easily identified, since they include all who neither commit the sin nor flounder about in saving themselves from it — all who combine a reasonable dexterity with acceptance of conventional rules But when the dexterity is lacking disaster follows.
		When a man splits an infinitive, he may be doing it unconsciously as a member of our class 1, or he may be deliberately rejecting the trammels of convention and announcing that he means to do as he will with his own infinitives.
	www-users.cs.york.ac.uk /~susan/cyc/s/split.htm (1861 words)

	split infinitive - yourDictionary.com - American Heritage Dictionary
		The split infinitive has been present in English ever since the 14th century, but it was not until the 19th century that grammarians labeled and condemned the usage.
		The Usage Panel is evenly divided on the one-adverb split infinitive.
		Infinitive phrases in which the adverb precedes a participle, such as to be rapidly rising, to be clearly understood, and to have been ruefully mistaken, are not split and should be acceptable to everybody.
	www.yourdictionary.com /ahd/s/s0655500.html (407 words)

	Split infinitive (via CobWeb/3.1 planetlab2.cs.umd.edu) (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-28)
		A split infinitive is a grammatical construction in the English language produced by inserting a word or phrase, usually an adverb or adverbial phrase, between to and a verb in its infinitive form.
		Split infinitives have been in use since the 13th century, although by the 16th Century they were rare in some of the Most notable authors.
		It is sometimes stated that a criticism of Split infinitives in English is that they are impossible in Latin.
	split-infinitive.iqnaut.net.cob-web.org:8888 (1357 words)

	Gentoo Linux Documentation -- The KDE Split Ebuilds HOWTO
		Split and monolithic ebuilds for both releases are present in Portage.
		Split packages allow us to create new ebuilds only for the packages that are actually changed, saving (in this example) more than two-thirds of the compilation time on an upgrade.
		It's been said before that split ebuilds would take much more time to emerge than the monolithic ones, due to the overhead of unpacking and running configure for every package.
	www.gentoo.org /doc/en/kde-split-ebuilds.xml (2022 words)

	Infinitive - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		When this particle is absent, the infinitive is said to be a bare infinitive; when it is present, it is generally considered to be a part of the infinitive, then known as the full infinitive (or to-infinitive), and some prescriptive grammarians hold that it should not be separated from the main word of the infinitive.
		The bare infinitive form is also the present subjunctive form and the imperative form, although most grammarians do not consider uses of the present subjunctive or imperative to be uses of the bare infinitive.
		Afrikaans has lost the distinction between the infinitive and present forms of verbs, with the exception of the verbs "wees" (to be), which admits the present form "is", and the verb "hê" (to have), whose present form is "het".
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Infinitive (2152 words)

	Matthew Yglesias: Split The Infinitive
		It doesn't split the infinitive and it preserves the meaning (albeit with a possible change in emphasis).
		Because split infinitives are simply not a problem in English, and there is usually little reason to avoid them.
		Splitting the infinitive with the negation, "not" is pretty lame.
	yglesias.typepad.com /matthew/2005/02/split_the_infin.html (2146 words)

	Basic Writing Tips - Some Controversial, All Correct
		An infinitive is a phrase that includes a verb preceded by the word "to," such as, "to play" or "to investigate." Now that we know what an infinitive is, maybe we now remember our English teachers lecturing us against "splitting" them.
		Simply put, a split infinitive is when a writer puts a word between the word "to" and the associated verb.
		Splitting infinitives is not criticized to the degree it has been in the past.
	www.ez-article-search.com /article13329.html (1294 words)

	Verbs2
		The rule proscribing split infinitives (and corollary rules about split verb phrases) was first proposed in the mid-nineteenth century, when English grammarians began to try to order English based on the grammar of Latin.
		Condemnation of the split infinitive is now pretty general, but it is only recently that any one seems to have thought of it.
		Split infinitive as a phrase seems to have been sufficiently catchy that it actually managed to wiggle into the writing public’s consciousness as a construction to be avoided.
	www2.ncsu.edu /ncsu/grammar/Verbs3.html (8408 words)

	Is It Wrong to Split an Infinitive?
		But in English, the infinitive form of the verb is usually accompanied by the particle "to": "to walk," "to run," "to think," "to feel," "to be." As a two-word unit, the infinitive in English almost begs to be split, at least sometimes.
		Usually, there is no need to split an infinitive, and to do so gratuitously is just asking for trouble from the grammar police.
		But if placing the infinitive's adverbial modifier either before or after the complete infinitive actually alters your intended meaning or makes it ambiguous, then by all means, go ahead and split the infinitive.
	www.grammartips.homestead.com /splitinfinitive.html (482 words)

	[No title]
		The strong resistance to the split infinitive is believed to have stemmed from influential British socialites’ aspiration in the late sixteenth century to reflect the political success of the Roman Empire through imitation (Einsohn 338).
		Ungainly constructions may arise when a writer will do anything to avoid a split infinitive, as in the case of the sentence, “The restoration is expected almost to double the company’s budget deficit.” Constance Hale defends the use of the split infinitive in her book, Sin and Syntax.
		Whether a writer chooses to split or not, the truth is that language is constantly changing and evolving, and grammar rules and standards should be flexible, and should aim to accommodate these changes.
	www.msu.edu /~mooreji4/wra210/portfolio/writing/split.doc (830 words)

	HIPWRITING.COM - Writing For The Internet 101
		Descriptively speaking, split infinitives are common in all varieties of English.
		The old prohibition on split infinitives is even more surprising when one observes that there are a number of expressions in English that are weakened considerably by avoiding the split infinitive.
		There are rare examples of non-adverbial phrases participating in the split infinitive construction, as in Shakespeare's split infinitive, a poetic inversion: "Thy pity may deserve to pitied be" (Sonnet 142).
	www.hipwriting.com /grammar/split.html (1575 words)

	Split Infinitive - It's not always wrong
		Split infinitives are not always wrong, but should be avoided when they result in an awkward construction.
		Notice how the to part of the infinitive is now right next to the base form of the verb--the intervening word or phrase has been moved to either before or after the infinitive.
		Many test takers may have learned at some point that split infinitives are always wrong, and may therefore overlook an answer that will be considered correct on the particular test.
	www.testmagic.com /grammar/explanations/verbs/split-infinitives.asp (814 words)

	split infinitives
		Because you can't split an infinitive in Latin.
		Well, you can't "split" an infinitive in Latin because in Latin the infinitive is still a single word.
		split infinitives....this last spring (i beleive it was then) Oxford university somebody announced that the official language rule of No split infinitives was no longer a rule.
	www.cimms.ou.edu /~doswell/peeves/split_infinitives.html (893 words)

	BBC News \| UK \| 'To boldly go' gets green light
		Experts behind the new Oxford English Dictionary have decided that splitting infinitives is okay.
		Oxford University Press says the rule of not splitting infinitives is based on a fallacy.
		The dictionary explains: "the dislike of split infinitives eg 'to boldly go where no man has gone before' is long-standing but...
	news.bbc.co.uk /1/hi/uk/150458.stm (499 words)

	[No title]
		First, it is interesting to note that the avoidance of splitting the infinitive seems to be strongest in the United Kingdom corpora, which compose the lower seven tiers of the chart, with only the very low-register unprepared spoken English corpus (Ukspok) entering the upper portion of the table, surrounded by Australian and United States corpora.
		While infinitives were split by a large assortment of words, the adverbs displayed in the chart below (2) were found to be among the primary interrupters of infinitives in every corpus.
		Here the split infinitive works not only to establish which adverb is modifying which verb, but also to space the sentence out and make it manageable as a single statement.
	www.andrew.cmu.edu /course/76-451/lucas.html (1874 words)

	Article for translators: Split Infinitives
		A split infinitive is an infinitive with an adverb placed between "to" and the verb.
		In fact, this split infinitive has become so famous that there are over 15,000 examples on Google: "to boldly go where no search engine has gone before" or "to boldly go where a lot of people have gone before" (advertising a holiday resort).
		the writer's fear of the split infinitive (allow us to properly consider) means he has placed properly in an unnatural position before to consider, and has changed the meaning of his sentence by doing so.
	www.translationdirectory.com /article261.htm (618 words)

	Split Infinitives
		In Latin, the infinitive is a single word, and is thus impossible to split; it is therefore bad form to split an infinitive in English -- when you are translating Latin.
		Although the influential New Oxford Dictionary of English recently admitted that "in standard English the principle of allowing split infinitives is broadly accepted as both normal and useful" (August, 1998), there are nevertheless plenty of people who consider it unacceptable.
		The 'Star Trek' captain was out there splitting infinitives in his 1960s TV science-fiction series long before the 'official' green light was given.
	jerz.setonhill.edu /writing/grammar/split.html (275 words)

	Guardian Unlimited \| Guardian daily comment \| Snobbery and the split infinitive
		That second class consists of people "who would as soon be caught putting their knives into their mouths as splitting an infinitive but have only a hazy notion of what constitutes that deplorable breach of etiquette".
		For second-class people "the aversion to the split infinitive springs not from instinctive good taste but from the tame acceptance of the misinterpreted opinions of others".
		Gowers goes on to write that splitting infinitives is fine as long as the sentence in which it appears makes smooth sense.
	www.guardian.co.uk /comment/story/0,3604,892333,00.html (741 words)

	Mark A. R. Kleiman: FOR THE SPLIT INFINITIVE
		But today he boldly stands up for the grossly slandered split infinitive, and I proudly stand shoulder-to-shoulder with him against the hordes of offended pedants who assail it.
		The prejudice against the split infinitive stems, I have been told, from the tendency to try to fit English grammar into the categories of Latin.
		I'd still put "stubbornly" in the split position, though, to avoid having the reader try to parse "stubbornly is to annoy" until it becomes obvious that the adverb refers back and not forward.
	www.samefacts.com /archives/000702.html (540 words)

	The Infinitive (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-28)
		Some English teachers believe that thou shall not split infinitives was written on the stone tablets that Moses carried down from the mountain.
		They believe that split infinitives are perfectly appropriate, especially in informal writing.
		When you are making the decision to split or not to split, consider your audience.
	www.chompchomp.com /terms/infinitive.htm (601 words)

	May I Split an Infinitive?
		He concludes: "For better or worse, the taboo against the split infinitive is a linguistic fact of life, which the writer ignores at his own risk.
		Thus, though splitting the infinitive is to be avoided, taking "don't split the infinitive" as an absolute prohibition has its hazards.
		One should not hesitate to boldly split the infinitive when no graceful alternative is available.
	www.grammarmudge.cityslide.com /articles/article/1026513/24681.htm (199 words)

	Release 2.0 \| Split Infinitives (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-28)
		An infinitive is said to be "split" when a word (often an adverb) or phrase sneaks between the to of the infinitive and the root of the verb: "to boldly go," being the most famous of its kind.
		The argument against split infinitives (based on rather shaky historical grounds) is that the infinitive is a single unit and, therefore, should not be divided.
		Today's dictionaries allow us to split the infinitive, but it should never be done at the expense of grace.
	www.msu.edu /user/sxf1999/cep817/rel2/repository/split_infinitives.htm (350 words)

	Diana Hacker: Language Debates: Split infinitives (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-28)
		The modern rule is more flexible: Yes, avoid split infinitives when they sound awkward, but don’t go into verbal contortions to avoid them.
		The effort to avoid the split infinitive at all costs has possibly resulted in more bad writing than the split infinitive itself.
		Unsplitting these infinitives results in more graceful phrasing: to increase profits substantially; to obey the law of the land at all times; to deal with the economic slump quickly and decisively.
	www.dianahacker.com /writersref/subpages_language/splitinf.html (540 words)

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