I like to occasionally split an infinitive.
Not always – just now and then. Neither too often, nor too seldom. There’s a fine line.
Quick review: An infinitive is the basic form of a verb, usually preceded by “to”. If I say “to sleep, perchance to dream”, then “to sleep” and “to dream” are infinitives.
But wherever you find an infinitive, things get weird in a hurry. For starters, the infinitive is not itself a verb – even though it is (as I just said) the verb’s “basic form”.
For example, if I write “I write”, the word “write” is a verb. But if I write “To write is my passion”, the infinitive “to write” functions as a noun. It’s the subject of the sentence.
I won’t go into how infinitives, depending on context, also can function as adjectives or adverbs. Or how sometimes infinitives drop the “to” because it’s absorbed and implied by a connected verb. Or how – never mind!
The only thing that concerns us here is that pesky “grammar rule” we’ve all been taught – that no infinitive ever should be split.
In other words, never write anything like the sentence with which I opened this article: “I like to occasionally split an infinitive.”
I plopped that word “occasionally” right down in the middle of the infinitive “to split”. Because I did, there’s a grammar-police SWAT team converging on my home. I can hear helicopter blades whirring overhead. Red laser-dots from sniper rifles, aimed through my window from neighboring rooftops, are dancing around my heart. Heavily armored English professors, brandishing grammar grenades, are bashing down my door. What would Jason Bourne do?
Well, probably he wouldn’t stop to calmly argue syntax with these implacable folks. But what he won’t do, I will.
Here’s the truth: In English, there is no rule of grammar that prohibits the splitting of an infinitive. The “rule” is a myth!
Wikipedia has a really thorough discussion of this issue. Here’s just one example of a sentence where the no-split-infinitive “rule” breaks down: “The population is expected to more than double in the next ten years.”
Here, the two-word adverbial phrase “more than” splits the infinitive “to double”. Where else, we might ask, would one put it – except right there in the middle? Anywhere else, and the sentence falls apart.
In many cases, it’s easy enough to “write around” the split, by moving the adverb outside the infinitive. There’s nothing wrong with doing this, if it doesn’t make the sentence sound awkward or stilted.
My opening sentence could have been worded “I like occasionally to split an infinitive.” To me, though, that sounds stuffy and pretentious.
Or “Occasionally I like to split an infinitive.” That subtly changes the meaning. Occasionally liking to do something isn’t quite the same thing as liking to occasionally do it.
Or “I like to split an infinitive occasionally.” This version, unlike the two before, is ambiguous: Does “occasionally” refer to “like” or “split”?
No, for the clearest, most natural, most precise writing, sometimes you must split an infinitive! (Notice that in the preceding sentence, “split” is an infinitive, even without the “to”.)
Possibly the most famous split infinitive of all is the stated mission of Star Trek’s flagship, the Enterprise: “to boldly go where no one has gone before”.
Many pundits insist that saying “boldly to go” would sound just plain stupid in this context. True enough. If I’d been in charge, I’d probably have written “to go boldly”. See, I’m not always against leaving infinitives unsplit.
But I won’t quibble in this case, because that grammar-police SWAT team is still closing in. So I’m counting on the Enterprise to quickly beam me outta here.
This would be a good time, Scottie. Any second now …
(This article is part of my series on words that are #worth1000pictures.)