The "never split infinitives" rule has always been bollocks. You can split infinitives in English. There is no reason not to. Sometimes it sounds downright poetic, like in the Star Trek intro: "To boldly go where no man has gone before".
The "rule" stems from an incredibly irrational desire by some language reformers who wanted English to work like Latin (hint: English isn't Latin) and in Latin, infinitives are written as one word. You couldn't write "to boldly go" in that order in Latin, because "to go" is one word.
So basically the rule of not splitting infinitives boils down to this: you can't put a word between "to" and "go" because if we were speaking Latin (which we aren't), you couldn't fit a word between them. Lucky for us we're not speaking Latin, so we're free to proudly split infinitives at our leisure.
tomatis2004 on April 21st, 2019 at 12:43 UTC »
Know how to use you're apostrophes or your a bad writer.
fakemakers on April 21st, 2019 at 12:50 UTC »
It's funny as a joke, but as a guide it's just bad.
DrKlootzak on April 21st, 2019 at 14:49 UTC »
The "never split infinitives" rule has always been bollocks. You can split infinitives in English. There is no reason not to. Sometimes it sounds downright poetic, like in the Star Trek intro: "To boldly go where no man has gone before".
The "rule" stems from an incredibly irrational desire by some language reformers who wanted English to work like Latin (hint: English isn't Latin) and in Latin, infinitives are written as one word. You couldn't write "to boldly go" in that order in Latin, because "to go" is one word.
So basically the rule of not splitting infinitives boils down to this: you can't put a word between "to" and "go" because if we were speaking Latin (which we aren't), you couldn't fit a word between them. Lucky for us we're not speaking Latin, so we're free to proudly split infinitives at our leisure.