A split infinitive is a grammatical construction in the English language where a word or phrase, usually an adverb or adverbial phrase, occurs between the marker to and the bare infinitive (uninflected) form of a verb. Probably the most famous split infinitive is from the Star Trek television series: "to boldly go where no man has gone before."^[1] Here "boldly" is thought of as splitting the full infinitive "to go". Grammar is the study of rules governing the use of language. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... --67. ... In grammar, the infinitive is the form of a verb that has no inflection to indicate person, number, mood or tense. ... This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ... Star Trek is an American science-fiction franchise spanning six television series, ten feature films, hundreds of novels, computer and video games, and other fan stories. ...

As the split infinitive became more popular in the 19th century, some grammatical authorities sought to introduce a prescriptive rule against it. The construction is still the subject of disagreement among native English speakers as to whether it is grammatically correct or good style. Fowler wrote in 1926, "No other grammatical issue has so divided English speakers since the split infinitive was declared to be a solecism . . . . [R]aise the subject of English usage in any conversation today and it is sure to be mentioned."^[2] However, most experts on language now agree that the split infinitive is sometimes appropriate.^[3] In linguistics, prescription is the laying down or prescribing of normative rules for the use of a language, or the making of recommendations for effective language usage. ... A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, often referred to simply as Fowlers Modern English Usage, or Fowler, is a style guide to British English usage, authored by Henry W. Fowler. ... In linguistic prescriptivism, a solecism is a grammatical or other mistake or absurdity. ...

History

History of the construction

Middle English

In Old English, the majority of infinitives were single words ending in -an (compare modern German -en), but about one fourth were "to" followed by a verbal noun in the dative case, which ended in -anne or -enne.^[4] (The to was thus originally a preposition governing the dative noun, though in modern English syntax it is better regarded as a particle before a verb form.) Then in Middle English, the bare infinitive and the infinitive after "to" took on the same uninflected form. The "to" infinitive was not split in Old or Early Middle English. The first known example in English, in which interestingly a pronoun rather than an adverb splits the infinitive, is in Layamon's Brut (early 13th century): Old English (also called Anglo-Saxon) is an early form of the English language that was spoken in parts of what is now England and southern Scotland between the mid-fifth century and the mid-twelfth century. ... Dative has several meanings. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with adposition. ... For other uses, see Syntax (disambiguation). ... Middle English is the name given by historical linguistics to the diverse forms of the English language spoken between the Norman invasion of 1066 and the mid-to-late 15th century, when the Chancery Standard, a form of London-based English, began to become widespread, a process aided by the... Layamon, or Laȝamon (using the archaic letter yogh), was a poet of the early 13th century, whose Brut (c. ... Brut, about the mythic Brutus of Troy, is a Middle English poem compiled and recast by the priest Layamon. ...

and he cleopede him to; alle his wise cnihtes.

for to him reade;^{[5] [6]}

This may be a poetic inversion for the sake of meter, and therefore says little about whether Layamon would have felt the construction to be syntactically natural. However this reservation does not apply to the following prose example from Wycliffe (14th century): For this was gret unkyndenesse, to this manere treten there brother^[7] (For this was great unkindness, to treat their brother in this manner). This article or section may be confusing or unclear for some readers, and should be edited to rectify this. ...

The split infinitive appeared after the Norman Conquest when English was borrowing very widely from French. Other Germanic language such as German still do not permit an adverb to fall between an infinitive and its particle (preposition), but French and other Romance languages do. Compare modern German, French, and English:

Ich beschließe, etwas nicht zu tun.

I decide not to do something.

Je décide de ne pas faire quelquechose.

I decide to not do something.

Thus the English split infinitive ("I decide to not do something") may have arisen under the influence of French.^{[citation needed]} 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. In grammar, inflection or inflexion is the modification or marking of a word (or more precisely lexeme) to reflect grammatical (that is, relational) information, such as gender, tense, number or person. ...

Modern English

After its rise in Middle English, the construction became rare in the 15th and 16th centuries.^[6] William Shakespeare used only one, and it is a special case as it is clearly a syntactical inversion for the sake of rhyme: Middle English is the name given by historical linguistics to the diverse forms of the English language spoken between the Norman invasion of 1066 and the mid-to-late 15th century, when the Chancery Standard, a form of London-based English, began to become widespread, a process aided by the... Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ...

Root pity in thy heart, that when it grows

Thy pity may deserve to pitied be (Sonnet 142).

Edmund Spenser, John Dryden, Alexander Pope, and the King James Version of the Bible used none, and they are very rare in the writing of Samuel Johnson. John Donne used them several times, though, and Samuel Pepys also used at least one.^{[8] [9]} No reason for the near disappearance of the split infinitive is known; in particular, no prohibition is recorded.^[6] Edmund Spenser Edmund Spenser (c. ... John Dryden John Dryden (August 9, 1631 – May 12, 1700) was an influential English poet, literary critic, and playwright who dominated the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known as the Age of Dryden. ... Alexander Pope, an English poet best known for his Essay on Criticism and Rape of the Lock Pope, circa 1727. ... The King James Version of the Bible, or Authorised Version, was first published in 1611, has had a profound impact on English literature. ... Samuel Johnson circa 1772, painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds. ... John Donne John Donne (pronounced Dun; 1572 – March 31, 1631) was a Jacobean poet and preacher, the representative of the so-called metaphysical poets of the period, though the term itself came after his death. ... Portrait of Samuel Pepys by John Hayls. ...

Split infinitives reappeared in the 18th century and became more common in the 19th. Daniel Defoe, Benjamin Franklin, William Wordsworth, Abraham Lincoln, George Eliot, Henry James, and Willa Cather are among the writers who used them. Now "people split infinitives all the time without giving it a thought".^[8] Grammarians have suggested that it reappeared because people frequently place adverbs before finite verbs,^[10] as in "She gradually got rid of her teddy bears" (and before the bare infinitive, as in "She will gradually get rid of her teddy bears"), or in transformational-grammar terms from a re-analysis of the role of to.^[6] Daniel Defoe Daniel Defoe (1660 [?] â€“ April 1731) was an English writer, journalist and spy, who gained enduring fame for his novel Robinson Crusoe. ... Benjamin Franklin (January 17 [O.S. January 6] 1706 – April 17, 1790) was one of the most well known Founding Fathers of the United States. ... William Wordsworth, English poet William Wordsworth (April 7, 1770 – April 23, 1850) was a major English romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their 1798 joint publication, Lyrical Ballads. ... Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865), sometimes called Abe Lincoln and nicknamed Honest Abe, the Rail Splitter, and the Great Emancipator, was an American politician who served as the 16th President of the United States (1861 to 1865), and the first president from the Republican Party. ... George Eliots birthplace at South Farm, Arbury George Eliot is the pen name of Mary Anne Evans[1] (22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880), who was an English novelist. ... For other uses of this name, see Henry James (disambiguation). ... Willa Cather photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1936 Wilella Sibert Cather (December 7, 1873 – April 24, 1947) is among the most eminent American authors. ... Transformational grammar is a broad term describing grammars (almost exclusively those of natural languages) which have been developed in a Chomskian tradition. ...

History of the controversy

Possibly the earliest comment against split infinitives was by an anonymous American in 1834:

I am not conscious, that any rule has been heretofore given in relation to this point […] The practice, however, of not separating the particle from its verb, is so general and uniform among good authors, and the exceptions are so rare, that the rule which I am about to propose will, I believe, prove to be as accurate as most rules, and may be found beneficial to inexperienced writers. It is this :—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.^[11]

The writer Richard Taylor also condemned split infinitives in 1840.^[12] General awareness seems to have started when Henry Alford condemned them in Plea for the Queen's English, published in 1864.^[13] Even as Alford and some other grammarians (Bache;^[14] William B. Hodgson, 1889; Raub^[15]) were condemning the split infinitive, others (Brown, 1851; Hall, 1882; Onions, 1904; Jespersen, 1905; Fowler and Fowler, cited above) were endorsing it. The first known use of the term "split infinitive" was in 1897.^[16] Despite the defense by some grammarians, at the beginning of the 20th century the prohibition was firmly established in the press and popular belief, and there are records of children being beaten at school for transgressing it. A correspondent to the BBC on a programme about English grammar in 1983 remarked: Henry Alford (October 7, 1810 - January 12, 1871) was an English churchman and scholar. ...

"One reason why the older generation feel so strongly about English grammar is that we were severely punished if we didn't obey the rules! One split infinitive, one whack; two split infinitives, two whacks; and so on." ^[17]

In the 1907 edition of The King's English, the Fowler brothers wrote: Henry Watson Fowler (10 March 1858 - 26 December 1933) was an English schoolmaster, lexicographer and commentator on usage, notable for both Fowlers Modern English Usage (first published 1926) and his work on the Concise Oxford Dictionary. ...

"The 'split' infinitive has taken such hold upon the consciences of journalists that, instead of warning the novice against splitting his infinitives, we must warn him against the curious superstition that the splitting or not splitting makes the difference between a good and a bad writer."

Later, in Modern English Usage, H. W. Fowler clarified, highlighting the importance of correcting a split infinitive without compromising the language:

"It is of no avail merely to fling oneself desperately out of temptation; one must so do it that no traces of the struggle remain; that is, sentences must be thoroughly remodelled instead of having a word lifted from its original place & dumped elsewhere:..." ^[18]

There was frequent skirmishing between the splitters and anti-splitters until the 1960s.^{[citation needed]} George Bernard Shaw wrote letters to newspapers supporting writers who used the split infinitive, and Raymond Chandler complained to his publisher about a proofreader who changed Chandler's split infinitives:^{[citation needed]} George Bernard Shaw (George) Bernard Shaw[1] (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950) was an Irish playwright based in the United Kingdom. ... Raymond Chandler Raymond Thornton Chandler (July 23, 1888 – March 26, 1959) was an Anglo-American author of crime stories and novels. ... Proofreading means reading a proof copy of a text in order to detect and correct any errors. ...

"Would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write a sort of broken-down patois which is something like the way a Swiss waiter talks, and that when I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split and when I interrupt the velvety smoothness of my more or less literate syntax with a few sudden words of bar-room vernacular, that is done with the eyes wide open and the mind relaxed and attentive. The method may not be perfect, but it is all I have."

Chandler was not defending the correctness of the construction, but rather contrasting it to his "more or less literate syntax", and defending its use as deliberate "broken-down patois".

Principal objections to the split infinitive

The descriptivist objection

Like most linguistic prescription, disapproval of the split infinitive was originally based on the descriptive observation that it was not in fact a feature of the prestige form of English which those proscribing it wished to champion. This is made explicit in the anonymous 1834 citation, the earliest known statement of the position, cited above. Likewise, Alford's objection in 1864, the first truly influential objection to the construction, is based on observation, namely that "there seems no good reason for flying in the face of common usage."'

Still today, many English speakers avoid split infinitives not because they follow a prescriptivist rule, but simply because it was not part of the language that they learned as children. One may, of course, speculate that they are influenced by prescriptivist thinking in the previous generation. Nonetheless, a complete picture of the debate must allow that there are those who are uncomfortable with the construction because their descriptivist observation of their own usage leads them to feel that it does not belong.

Some of those who avoid split infinitives differentiate according to type and register. Clearly, "I decided to not go" is not nearly as awkward as "I decided to by bus on Wednesday go"; that is, it makes a big difference what kinds of adverbials are inserted, and the boundaries of normality are subjective. Again, split infinitives are far more common in speech than in academic writing, and a sense of what makes proper formal style is likewise subjective. Thus an attempt to avoid the construction need not be based entirely on prescriptivist rules; it can draw simultaneously on a descriptivist observation that certain split infinitives are not usual in certain situations.

The argument from classical languages

It has been claimed that the dislike of the split infinitive is based on a comparison with classical languages. In Greek and Latin, it is impossible to split infinitives because these languages never use their infinitives together with a preposition. As there is nothing to split, the question does not arise here one way or the other. To disapprove of the construction on the grounds that the classics did not use it would therefore be a very weak argument. Nevertheless, it is often suggested that this was the deciding factor. For example, the American Heritage Book of English Usage (1996) states: "The only rationale for condemning the construction is based on a false analogy with Latin." However, the authors do not cite any opponent of splitting who argues from such an analogy. It remains to be demonstrated whether the argument was ever really used by proscribing authorities, or whether it is in fact a straw man constructed by those opposed to prohibition. The straw man fallacy is a rhetorical technique (also classified as a logical fallacy) based on misrepresentation of an opponents position. ...

The argument from Germanic languages

Some are said to dislike the split infinitive on the grounds that it is not a natural construction in a Germanic language. This is a weak argument today, as standard English has many constructions novel to the Germanic language family. Also, while German and Dutch never allow an adverbial to fall between the preposition and the infinitive, Swedish does. However, given that the further back in history one examines the English language, the more typically Germanic it becomes, it is possible that the reason the medieval split infinitive never gained widespread acceptance was that it was still uncommon enough to sound foreign. In linguistics, an adverbial is a sentence function like subject and object and so on. ...

Current views

Present reference texts of usage deem simple split infinitives unobjectionable. (Compound split infinitives remain controversial; see Special situations below.) For example, Curme's Grammar of the English Language (1931) says that not only is the split infinitive correct, but it "should be furthered rather than censured, for it makes for clearer expression". The Columbia Guide to Standard American English (1993) notes that the split infinitive "eliminates all possibility of ambiguity", in contrast to the "potential for confusion" in an unsplit construction. The American Heritage Book of English Usage quoted above also opposes the condemnation. Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary says, "there has never been a rational basis for objecting to the split infinitive." Style guides generally give guidance on language use. ... English language spread in the United States. ... Look up ambiguity in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Rational may be: the adjective for the state of rationality acting according to the philosophical principles of rationalism a mathematical term for certain numbers; the rational numbers the software company Rational Software; now owned by IBM, and formerly Rational Software Corporation This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid...

Nevertheless, many teachers of English still admonish students against using split infinitives. Because the prohibition has become so widely known, the Columbia Guide (1993, above) recommends that writers "follow the conservative path [of avoiding split infinitives when they are not necessary], especially when you're uncertain of your readers' expectations and sensitivities in this matter."

Avoiding split infinitives

Those writers who choose to avoid split infinitives can either place the splitting element elsewhere in the sentence (as noted in the 1834 proscription) or reformulate the sentence (perhaps by rephrasing it without an infinitive) and thus avoid the issue. In some cases, the first option creates an ungrammatical sentence or changes the meaning. R.L. Trask uses this example: Robert Lawrence Larry Trask (November 10, 1944 - March 27, 2004) was Professor of Linguistics at the University of Sussex and an authority on Basque language and historical linguistics. ...

She decided to gradually get rid of the teddy bears she had collected. ^[19]

"Gradually" splits the infinitive "to get." But if we were to move it, where would it go?

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

This implies that the decision was gradual.

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

This implies that the collecting process was gradual.

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

This would sound awkward to most native speakers of English.

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

This is almost as awkward as its immediate predecessor.

The sentence can be rewritten to maintain its meaning, however, using a noun—"She decided to get rid of her teddy bear collection gradually"—or a different grammatical aspect of the verb—"She decided she would gradually get rid of her teddy bear collection." Fowler (1926) admits that this second option is always available but questions whether it is always worth the trouble. In linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb defines the temporal flow (or lack thereof) in the described event or state. ...

On a historical level, it is possible that years of attacks against split infinitives by prescriptive grammarians have cowed some people into needless reluctance to split other compound verb forms. For example, people will contort sentences to avoid placing an adverb in its usual position between the auxiliary verb and the participle, leading to constructions such as, "The argument originally had been used," instead of "The argument had originally been used," which is more natural for most speakers. In linguistics, an auxiliary (also called helping verb, auxiliary verb, or verbal auxiliary) is a verb whose function it is to give further semantic or syntactic information about the main or full verb which follows it. ...

Special situations

Compound split infinitives, in which more than one adverb is employed, and other multi-word insertions are still contentious. In 1996 the usage panel of The American Heritage Book of English Usage were evenly divided for and against such sentences as "I expect him to completely and utterly fail." More than three-quarters of the panel rejected "We are seeking a plan to gradually, systematically, and economically relieve the burden." Yet 87 percent of the panel deemed acceptable the multi-word adverbial in "We expect our output to more than double in a year." Here the problem appears to be the breaking up of the verbal phrase "to be seeking a plan to relieve": a segment of the head verbal phrase is so far removed from the remainder that the listener or reader must expend greater effort to understand the sentence.

Splitting infinitives with negations, as in the phrase "I want to not see you anymore," remains one of the most complicated areas of contention. Even those who are generally tolerant of split infinitives may draw the line at infinitives split by negation, labeling them awkward or ungrammatical. Indeed, a Web or Usenet search will demonstrate that such phrases as "told you not to" still greatly outnumber their split counterparts like "told you to not." The problem is that the relative inflexibility of negation, especially of certain verbs, makes reformulating such sentences difficult. Whereas "I want to happily run" can easily be altered to "I want to run happily," "I want to see you not" is simply not modern English prose. There are multiple possibilities for altering this sentence, each with its own disadvantages: Moving the "not" immediately preceding the to-infinitive ("I want not to see you any more") sounds awkward to most people. Negating the verb rather than the desire ("I don't want to see you anymore") is in fact the most commonly used alternative, but in writing might appear ambiguous: if stressed on want, it implies no particular desire but no objection either. The simplest construction, "I want to see you no more," is perfectly acceptable in written English but sounds stilted and is thus rarely found in the spoken language. Negation (i. ... WWWs historical logo designed by Robert Cailliau The World Wide Web (WWW or simply the Web) is a global, read-write information space. ... Usenet is a distributed Internet discussion system that evolved from a general purpose UUCP network of the same name. ...

There are rare examples of non-adverbial phrases participating in the split-infinitive construction, but genuine examples are hard to find. In verse, poetic inversion for the sake of meter or of bringing a rhyme word to the end of a line often results in abnormal syntax, as with Layamon's and Shakespeare's split infinitives (cited above), in which the infinitive is split by a pronoun and a past participle respectively. However, clearly these would never have occurred in a prose text by the same authors. On the other hand, colloquial examples are to be found in recent literature. A modern example with a pronoun is It was their nature to all hurt one another.^[20]

Notes

A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, often referred to simply as Fowlers Modern English Usage, or Fowler, is a style guide to British English usage, authored by Henry W. Fowler. ... Bill Walsh is perhaps the United States best known newspaper copy editor, largely based on the popularity of his two books about editing, Lapsing into a Comma and The Elephants of Style, and his Web site, The Slot: A Spot for Copy Editors, one of the first online authorities on... Layamon, or Laȝamon (using the archaic letter yogh), was a poet of the early 13th century, whose Brut (c. ... William Strunk Jr. ... The Elements of Style, 2000 edition. ... John Horne Tooke (June 25, 1736 - March 18, 1812), was an English politician and philologist. ... Robert Lawrence Larry Trask (November 10, 1944 - March 27, 2004) was Professor of Linguistics at the University of Sussex and an authority on Basque language and historical linguistics. ...

Further reading

• Huddleston, Rodney D. and Pullum, Geoffrey K. (2002). The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-43146-8. (See especially pp. 581–582.)
• alt.english.usage FAQ entry on split infinitives
• The Columbia Guide to Standard American English