Quote:
Originally Posted by Fluribus
If we weren't meant to split infinitives, they wouldn't be splittable. As long as the meaning isn't damaged, split away. I suspect that some English speakers have been jealous of languages where the infinitive is a single word. English was too unruly for them.
|
Ideas like "split infinitives" and saying "It is I" rather than "It is me" come from Victorian grammarians' obsession with trying to force English into the straitjacket of Latin grammar. In Latin the infinitive is a single word, and hence can't be split, but that's certainly not the case in English, and saying "you can't split the infinitive in Latin, so you shouldn't do so in English" is just... silly. English is not Latin and has different grammar.