By Susie Brown
I always thought that splitting an infinitive was a major no-no in English grammar, but it turns out that the split infinitive is not as problematic as I once thought.
Thankfully, the English language is versatile enough that it allows a writer to express themselves in a variety of ways. But sometimes we all get to that point in writing that, although there may be a number of ways to say one thing, there is only one way to express an idea with just exactly the right words.
For example…
Often splitting an infinitive provides the perfect effect, so not having that option in a writer’s toolbox can be limiting. For instance the phrase “to lovingly attend to his sick mother,” really makes the point that the attention is full of love. If I were forced to avoid using the split infinitive, the alternatives would not be quite as effective. Here are a few attempts to avoid the split infinitive in “to lovingly attend to his sick mother…”
- to attend to his sick mother lovingly
- to attend to his sick mother in a loving fashion
- he gave his sick mother attention and treated her lovingly
None of the alternatives emphasize quite how lovingly he attended to his sick mother.
I wanted to find out whether cutting split infinitives out from my writing diet is really necessary, so I did some research.
What is a split infinitive?
The simplest form of a verb is called an infinitive. There are two types of infinitive, the bare infinitive and the full infinitive. An example of a bare infinitive is the word “go,” which in its full form would be “to go.” Likewise, the bare form of another word like “jump” would become “to jump” in the full form.
As you can see the full form of an infinitive adds the word “to” in front of the bare infinitive verb. Being as the bare form of an infinitive, such as “go,” is only one word, there is no danger of it getting split apart. Therefore, the danger of splitting an infinitive only matters with the full form of an infinitive, such as “to go.” If I wanted to split the full infinitive “to go,” I could say, “to boldly go.” Perhaps the most famous example of a split infinitive is Star Trek’s famous introductory line, “to boldly go where no man has gone before.” The word “boldly” splits the infinitive verb “to go.”
What’s the Big Deal About Splitting an Infinitive?
In the English language, the full infinitive verb form always consists of two words. Let’s look at a few other languages too. Here are some examples of the full infinitive “to go” in some other languages…
- Latin- ire
- German- zu gehen
- Spanish- ir
- French- aller
- Irish- chun dul
As you can see, it is not uncommon for the full infinitive to consist of two words. In fact, that seems to be case in most “western” languages.
Latin- No Split Infinitives
I would like to call your attention to the fact that the full infinitive in Latin is always only one word, and as a result, it is impossible to split an infinitive in Latin. Let me just reiterate that point, it’s not that there is any rule against splitting an infinitive in Latin, rather it is an impossibility.
Paying Homage to Latin
One of the historical building blocks of the English language was Latin, and therefore there were linguists who felt that it would be disrespectful to do things in English that you can’t do in Latin. It is worth noting that there were always linguists that disagreed with this position. Somehow, the opinion that splitting an infinitive is grammatically incorrect became the rule of choice.
What is your opinion about splitting infinitives, do you think that it’s okay to boldly split infinitives?
Susie Brown is a FastUpFront Blog contributor and business consultant. Fastupfront offers business loan alternatives for existing businesses in need of working capital.
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