Happy 12/12/12 to everyone - and to celebrate, here is a writing tip piece by Andy021278 that we hope you find useful. Enjoy!

We’ve all seen it. We’ve probably all hurled expletives over it. And more than one of us has probably fretted over it at some time or another. It’s that annoying grammar check in MS Word, and other similar word processing programs, which tells you that you’ve split an infinitive. Well, just what is an infinitive, what have I done to split it, and why am I in trouble for doing it?

First off, let’s deal with describing what an infinitive is.

Infinitives 101:

At its most basic, an infinitive is a form of a verb. Verbs are those “doing” words we all know, and love, and use so often: going, drinking, writing, running, jumping, eating, etc.

Now it’s important to understand that there are two types of infinitive: one is the bare infinitive, and the other is the full infinitive.

The bare infinitive is the uninflected (or basic) form of the verb that we find in the dictionary: go, drink, write, run, jump, eat, etc.

The full infinitive places the marker “to” in front of the bare infinitive, giving us the verb form that we are more familiar with seeing in stories: to go, to drink, to write, to run, to jump, to eat, etc.

It is the full infinitive that gets split, as it is impossible to split the bare infinitive.

How have you managed to split an infinitive?

Well, let’s look at what is arguably the most famous split infinitive known to exist. It has been around since September 8^th 1966, and it is found in the opening credits to Star Trek: The Original Series.

“Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its five year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.”

The split infinitive here is “to boldly go”. As you will (hopefully) remember from earlier, the infinitive is “to go”, and it has been split by inserting the adverb “boldly” in between “to” and “go”.

So, a split infinitive is simply where one word (usually an adverb) has been placed in the middle of an infinitive. It is also possible to have compound split infinitives (this is a very modern term, and until the late 20^th or early 21^st century were simply called split infinitives), which have more than one word (usually an adverbial phrase) in the middle of an infinitive (e.g. to more than double, to completely and totally eradicate)

Why am I in trouble for splitting an infinitive?

The whole thing about split infinitives being regarded as heresy and anathema stems from the 1800s. Several cases were stated against splitting infinitives by various educated and learned people throughout the 19^th century.

One argument against splitting infinitives has been that in learned languages in use at the time, such as Latin and Old English, it is impossible to split an infinitive; however, this is because in those languages the full infinitive is a single word. So it was felt that the rule about not being able to split infinitives should be applied to English with the same veracity.

The earliest record of regarding split infinitives as a solecism comes from an anonymous American writer in 1834:

“The particle, TO, which comes before the verb in the infinitive mode, must not be separated from it by the intervention of an adverb or any other word or phrase; but the adverb should immediately precede the particle, or immediately follow the verb.”

Then in 1840, Richard Taylor condemned split infinitives as a “disagreeable affectation”, and in 1859, Solomon Barrett, Jr., called them “a common fault”.

However, the whole split infinitive heresy didn’t really take off until Henry Alford addressed it in his Plea for the Queen’s English in 1864:

But surely, this is a practice entirely unknown to English speakers and writers. It seems to me that we ever regard the to of the infinitive as inseparable from its verb. And, when we have already a choice between two forms of expression, 'scientifically to illustrate' and 'to illustrate scientifically,' there seems no good reason for flying in the face of common usage.

The truth of the matter:

Actually, you’re not in any trouble for splitting an infinitive. There is not now, and nor has there ever been, a strict grammatical rule against splitting infinitives. There are pedantic linguists out there who will still chastise you for splitting an infinitive, and they will not rest until you have corrected your butchery of the language of Shakespeare. However, keep in mind that even the Bard himself split an infinitive in Sonnet 142, and the Oath of Office of the President of The United States contains the split infinitive “to faithfully execute”.

In fact, in many situations the split infinitive allows for clarity and unambiguity in a sentence. Consider the following (the split infinitive is underlined):

She decided to gradually get rid of the teddy bears she had collected

The following are ways of unsplitting the split infinitive, but as you will see, it leads to confusion as to what the sentence actually means (these are all revisions of the above sentence, but which one means the same as the original? Obviously, none of them do):

She decided gradually to get rid of the teddy bears she had collected

She decided to get rid of the teddy bears she had collected gradually

She decided to get gradually rid of the teddy bears she had collected

She decided to get rid gradually of the teddy bears she had collected

So, do you use one of the sentences without the split infinitive, or do you use the sentence with the split infinitive?

Now, I’m not for one minute suggesting that you go out there with a meat cleaver, find every single infinitive, and split them in new and interesting ways. What I’m saying is, when you are writing your story (or anything else) and MS Word flags up a split infinitive, you need to go and make yourself a cup of coffee, have a biccie and say “To heck with it”.

A notable exception:

However, as one small contradiction to what I’ve just said, I would suggest that in any kind of formal writing (such as college/university assignments or academic papers being submitted to professional journals), or if you plan to submit your story for publication, it is recommended that split infinitives should be avoided like the proverbial plague. This is because there is still a pervading view in the academic world that the split infinitive is the sign of weak writing