Some grammarians groan when they hear the Starship Enterprise’s mission “to boldly go” into television ratings history —not because they hate science fiction but because they object to the split infinitive. That’s what I thought about when I saw this sign, which appears on construction sites all over New York City:
To anonymously report.
An infinitive is the verb, the whole verb, and nothing but the verb – except for to, which grabs onto the infinitive most of the time. In the sign, to report is the infinitive and anonymously is the word that interrupts it.
A side point before continuing: grammar terms, like wire coat hangers, reproduce at an exponential rate. Give a couple of grammar terms a bit of privacy, and soon you’ll have a dozen more. Split infinitives may also be called cleft or interrupted, and infinitives without the to are known as bare. These terms make me wonder what, exactly, is being interrupted. Paging Sigmund Freud.
The rule against split infinitives dates to a 19th century grammar text, which declared that the prohibition would “prove to be as accurate as most rules, and may be found beneficial to inexperienced writers.” Not exactly a rave review. On the opposing side, playwright George Bernard Shaw went so far as to ask that an editor who objected to split infinitives be replaced by “an intelligent Newfoundland dog.”
My position on the subject? Split an infinitive whenever you want. I promise to not report you to the Grammar Cops.
I thought that the prohibition also had something to do with Latin grammar rules. I have had writing teachers who abhor the split infinitive, but I have also read that the general consensus is that they are now acceptable since so widely used. I love the term “cleft infinitive.” I’d never heard that one before!
The overlay of Latin (in which the infinitive is a single word) on English is one theory about the origin of this rule. There are others theories, too, I discovered while doing other research. I used to edit out splits (clefts sounds so much better!) but now I don’t bother. I should probably apologize to all those kids who had to move the modifier on my HW!