Still to refrain from splitting infinitives?

[MrsSeanBean]

Maybe this is a topics for pedants' corner. I don't know if this is generally considered acceptable now.

Am I an anachronism?

"that I think that most of the time they are the ugly result of idleness or bad teaching or both" Argh. The bad teaching happened way back in the 18th Century when someone decided to try to overlay the grammatical rules of a Latinate language (viz, Latin!) on to a Germanic one. Now that's bad scholarship. Using or not using split infinitives is a question of style, not grammar. The mobility of adverbs allows for very subtle shifts in emphasis in English, and putting the adverb after the "to" can allow the sentence to flow better - sometimes it doesn't. It's not something to be forgiven or otherwise...

I'm so glad that there are so many people on here who think this is a stupid rule.

And the split-infinitive rule isn't even really a rule in latin - it's an impossibility. Latin infinitives are just one word.

Latin is a word-order-independent language isn't it? It's beyond asinine to try to extrapolate from how Latin works to how English should work.

My bible is Fowlers - and it says it is OK! So I will continue to happily splt infinitives!

Can somebody please explain to me how you can split an infinitive in Latin - with examples? From what I remember of Latin it woudl be impossible. My example of "told quickly to run" does not mean "he was quickly told to run". Perhaps if I had used "depart" instead of "run" the difference in the example woudl have been clearer to everybody. The distinction is between the speed with which he is to leave and the speed at which he is to leave. That is a distinction which cannot be made with a split infinitive but perhaps it is a subtlety better kept for Pedants' Corner.

"Can somebody please explain to me how you can split an infinitive in Latin - with examples? From what I remember of Latin it woudl be impossible.

You can't in Latin, no - no-one is saying you can. But English is not a Latinate language, and doesn't follow the same rules as Latin grammar. Therefore whether you can split infinitives in Latin is irrelevant.

"My example of "told quickly to run" does not mean "he was quickly told to run". ... The distinction is between the speed with which he is to leave and the speed at which he is to leave. That is a distinction which cannot be made with a split infinitive but perhaps it is a subtlety better kept for Pedants' Corner. "

If you split "to run", and say "to quickly run", then the adverb clearly modifies "run". There's no ambiguity. Your example of "told quickly to run" does have an element of ambiguity, as the modifying adverb in English can come before or after the verb - e.g. "she ran quickly down the road" is perfectly grammatical English. I don't think I understand your problem, tbh. Split infinitives are a matter of style, not grammar.

Kitten is the ambiguity you are concerned with the one between running fast, on the one hand, and quickly commencing to run, on the other?

I don't think that the non-split formua does actually avoid that ambiguity.

And the trouble with "he was told quickly to run" is that it introduces the further ambiguity as to whether he should run quickly or was told quickly.

My point is that both the non-split formula and the spilt one are capable of housing ambiguity. So we need to look in other directions to resolve ambiguity.

Oh cross-post. Will read Hab.

I am well aware that the confusion of "its"/"it's" is a right/wrong call - I just thought we'd put the split infinitive tosh to bed and was lining up the next pet hate!

Stillstanding - are you honestly saying that if someone says, "I ain't done nothing" (probably stressing the word "nothing") you are genuinely at a loss as to whether he or she has or has not done something? I think it's pretty clear he/she has indeed done nothing and is trying to make the negative impact of the sentence even clearer by making the verb negative too. Is anyone honestly confused when faced with a real-world example like this?

Habbibu,
I think we shall have to agree to disagree on this, both as to current good practice and as to whetehr or not it is proper to describe English as a Germanic langiage or assume that you have to choose between what you describe as Latinate rules, even though they have no Latin equivalent in this instance, or Germanic ones. All I say is that it is surely elegance and clarity you should be seeking in the use of modern English and a split infinitive often offends the first, to my ear at any rate, and may obscure the second.

Ah, see, for "elegance", I would substitute "the sensibilities of fuddy-duddies who think English should follow the rules of a long-dead language for no obvious reason".

I wonder if, in some of my English sentences, I am doing things that are not possible in Aramaic?

And I haven't seen a good case for the argument that split infinitives are not clear. Surely by placing the adverb in the middle of the verb, we make clear which verb it applies to?

To be fair, my DH came up with an interesting argument on this one - if English is not your first language, you might thing that 'to boldly' was the infinitive, and try to work out what the verb 'boldly' was. But then we couldn't come up with many adverbs that weren't marked with a clear 'ly' suffix, which surely must limit the scope for confusion on this front.