Silently to judge those who split infinitives in thread titles?

[UptheChimney]

Or:

To judge silently those who split infinitives?

I could make up some bollocks theory about what sort of person would split an infinitive in a thread title , but it'd be bollocks, wouldn't it?

Jeanne was your grandfather Yoda?

YABU to irritatingly write such an annoying judgement on your fellow MNers. No one should give a toss.

More or less, atticus, but I was replying to pip who quoted it.

It's taking the piss out of pseudo-Latinate syntax, IMO. Or he always was.

Infinitive = to + verb base
Split infinitive = putting a whopping gurt adverb between the two.

I had a pendant boyfriend at Uni who cringed every time he watched Star Trek with the immortal line

"to boldly go where no man has gone before"

We don't speak Latin so as far I am concerned it is fine although I would try to avoid it when writing a formal letter.

Pants, I just looked up the star trek quote and it's no one not no man. But the point still stands.

And clearly you are no longer silently judging

Thank you Jean!

I wasn't much cop at the old latin. Got 19% in my first year exam and 12% the next year

I shall yoda speak from now on to ensure I don't an infinitive split.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with splitting an infinitive. You may as well get upset about contractions.

Which I note you've made good use of in your OP.

Yes, the split infinitive is perfectly ok, as is ending a sentence with a preposition, both of which are artificial rules taken from latin.

Sometimes a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, as shown by the person whose dissertation was downgraded because of breaking a rule that should not even exist.

Yabu. Unless the title is in Latin. Otherwise you're being a pedant who is totally wrong, and that's just sad.

My contractions were an awful long time ago and I'm not going to get upset about them, two children I have as a result.

I do love an Oxford comma, though. So elegant. But I'm American. It's still very popular here in the USA.

I only know about split infinitives because Miss Annersley was always wittering on about them in the Chalet School books.

Not keen on the Oxford comma, though. Or single quotes inside double.

The Star Trek quote was always "no man." It was changed to "no one" for the movies when they realised they'd better be a bit more inclusive.

If we had to rank the options for expressing the silent judging of people in the thread title in terms of clarity of meaning and general elegance, most of us would probably agree that they rank as follows:

1. (The best) to silently judge those...
2. To judge silently those...
3. (By far the worst) silently to judge those...

So well done OP for choosing the worst of the options.

Also, if you're going to be pedantic, you'd actually want to have made the title 'AIBU to silently judge those who split infinities in thread titles?' Because 'silently to judge those who split infinitive in thread titles?' is clearly not a sentence.

The "rule" against splitting infinitives is not a rue of grammar. It's merely a convention.

*rule

A preposition is something you should never end a sentence with.

Based on the general grammar and punctuation on MN I'd be surprised if 10% of the posters know what one is :)

Atticusclaw that's not true. Star Trek the next generation used "no one"

OMG I dont even have the faintest idea of what an Infinitive is!

Go and talk to the primary school where I sat un educated for several years, and lost so much it was too late and too boring to pick it all up, if in fact it was even taught because I believe in the 80's teaching grammar and basics was not in political fashion. xx

Star Trek original series (Captain Kirk) was 'no man'. Star Trek the next generation (Captain Picard) was 'no one'.

From what I can imperfectly recall (maybe from reading something by David Crystal?), it's all a bit Hyacinth Bucket.

Once upon a time, the ancient Greeks were the top dogs, but when those upstart Romans got the upper hand, they modelled their language on the "perfect" Greek language - same number of parts of speech, same rules, etc. (a bit like linguistic spanx), hence classic Latin was as perfect as the perfect ancient Greek.

Then English grammarians got on to the job of making English as perfectly perfect as could be, and of course that meant spanxing English. Because "perfect" means "superior", and the mongrel language we had been speaking for generations in these sceptred isles wasn't good enough so it had to be made to conform to the Latin/Greek system.

It's all nonsense, of course. English has always had a structure that's different from them continental forriners.

at spanxing English