There is nothing grammatically wrong with a "split infinitive"

[Habbibu]

So there.

i know my dad (62yo, went to posh school) was taught that it was a Very Bad Thing

but in my 70s comp it was never mentioned

I wholeheartedly agree

what's a split infinitive?

to boldly go = split infinitive
to go boldly = approved by tutter's dad

(the infinitive = to go / to catch / to mumsnet)

(so, a split one would be e.g. to frantically mumsnet)

thank you tutter

The reason why it is/was supposed to be a bad thing is that it is impossible to do in Latin (where the infinitive is all one word) so in the 18th C it was judged - Latin being the arbiter of all right - to be therefore wrong in English as well.

So, decide for yourself whether this is relevant or not, although I am with RR, and think it rarely flows well...

It's also impossible to do in dutch I think.

I don't like them either
I think we were publicly humiliated for them at school and it has stuck

I don't use them, but I don't take them out of other people's writing as these days they are officially incorrect -- and also sometimes their removal creates ambiguity or clunkiness in a sentence, which would mean re-writing it from scratch. Can't think of an example offhand

officially correct

I think Fowler's (the arbiter of all things correct in grammar ) actually says that the "prohibition" is actually an incorrect application of the Latin - and that on occasions it is not only permisable but preferable to split an infinitive, because not to do so actaully changes the meaning.

Depends on rest of bit of writing.

Good stylish smooth grammatical writing inc. a split infinitive (for some reason I was going to write split expletive there) or two - no problem whatsoever, clearly being done deliberately (perhaps for effect, doesn't matter why).

Rubbish clunky syntactically muddled writing with split infinitives in it - well, clearing out those might be a place to start. (But split inf.s are rarely the only issue in those circs.!)

Like the idea of a split expletive -- 'I thought I told you to f$$$$ing p$ss off!'

I find the ways around the split infinitive to be quite inelegant sometimes. But it's a stylistic issue, not grammatical. Hurrah! We're in agreement.