In the 19th century, some linguistic prescriptivists sought to disallow the split infinitive, and the resulting conflict had considerable cultural importance.
[7][8] The uncontroversial example appears to be a syntactical inversion for the sake of meter:[9] Edmund Spenser, John Dryden, Alexander Pope, and the King James Version of the Bible used none, and they are very rare in the writing of Samuel Johnson.
[12] Daniel Defoe, Benjamin Franklin, William Wordsworth, Abraham Lincoln, George Eliot, Henry James, and Willa Cather are among the writers who used them.
Today, according to the American Heritage Book of English Usage, "people split infinitives all the time without giving it a thought.
George Curme writes: "If the adverb should immediately precede the finite verb, we feel that it should immediately precede also the infinitive…"[14] Thus, if one says: one may, by analogy, wish to say: This is supported by the fact that split infinitives are often used as echoes, as in the following exchange, in which the riposte parodies the slightly odd collocation in the original sentence: This is an example of an adverb being transferred into split infinitive position from a parallel position in a different construction.
The pronoun all commonly appears in this position: and may even be combined with an adverb: However an object pronoun, as in the Layamon example above, would be unusual in modern English, perhaps because this might cause a listener to misunderstand the to as a preposition: While, structurally, acceptable as poetic formulation, this would result in a garden path sentence, particularly evident if the indirect object is omitted: Other parts of speech would be very unusual in this position.
Examples include "We pray you to proceed / And justly and religiously unfold..." (Shakespeare, Henry V, Act II, scene 9) and "...she is determined to be independent, and not live with aunt Pullet" (George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss, volume VI, chapter I).
[17] An adverb should not be placed between the verb of the infinitive mood and the preposition to, which governs it; as Patiently to wait—not To patiently wait.Another early prohibition came from an anonymous American in 1834:[23][25][26] The practice of separating the prefix of the infinitive mode from the verb, by the intervention of an adverb, is not unfrequent among uneducated persons … I am not conscious, that any rule has been heretofore given in relation to this point … The practice, however, of not separating the particle from its verb, is so general and uniform among good authors, and the exceptions are so rare, that the rule which I am about to propose will, I believe, prove to be as accurate as most rules, and may be found beneficial to inexperienced writers.
[27]In 1840, Richard Taylor also condemned split infinitives as a "disagreeable affectation",[28] and in 1859, Solomon Barrett, Jr., called them "a common fault.
"[29] However, the issue seems not to have attracted wider public attention until Henry Alford addressed it in his Plea for the Queen's English in 1864: A correspondent states as his own usage, and defends, the insertion of an adverb between the sign of the infinitive mood and the verb.
One of the earliest arguments against the split infinitive, expressed by an anonymous contributor to the New-England Magazine in 1834, was based on the impression that it was not an observable feature of English as used by "good authors.
For instance, the rhetorician John Duncan Quackenbos said, "To have is as much one thing, and as inseparable by modifiers, as the original form habban, or the Latin habere.
"[41] The usage writer John Opdycke based a similar argument on the closest French, German, and Latin translations.
[44] Besides, even if the concept of the full infinitive is accepted, it does not necessarily follow that any two words that belong together grammatically need be adjacent to each other.
A frequent argument of those who tolerate split infinitives is that the split-infinitive prohibition is based solely on a misguided comparison with Latin.
One example is in the American Heritage Book of English Usage: "The only rationale for condemning the construction is based on a false analogy with Latin.
[49][50][51] The argument implies an adherence to the humanist idea of the greater purity of the classics,[52] which, particularly in Renaissance times, led people to regard as inferior aspects of English that differed from Latin.
[55] For example, Curme's Grammar of the English Language (1931) says that not only is the split infinitive correct, but it "should be furthered rather than censured, for it makes for clearer expression."
The Columbia Guide to Standard American English notes that the split infinitive "eliminates all possibility of ambiguity," in contrast to the "potential for confusion" in an unsplit construction.
Because the prohibition has become so widely known, the Columbia Guide recommends that writers "follow the conservative path [of avoiding split infinitives when they are not necessary], especially when you're uncertain of your readers' expectations and sensitivities in this matter.
"[56] Likewise, the Oxford dictionaries do not regard the split infinitive as ungrammatical, but on balance consider it likely to produce a weak style and advise against its use for formal correspondence.
"[59] Still more strongly, older editions of The Economist Style Guide said, "Happy the man who has never been told that it is wrong to split an infinitive: the ban is pointless.
But if moving the modifier would ruin the rhythm, change the meaning or even just put the emphasis in the wrong place, splitting the infinitive is the best option.
In 1996, the usage panel of The American Heritage Book was evenly divided for and against such sentences as, but more than three-quarters of the panel rejected Here the problem appears to be the breaking up of the verbal phrase to be seeking a plan to relieve: a segment of the head verbal phrase is so far removed from the remainder that the listener or reader must expend greater effort to understand the sentence.
By contrast, 87 percent of the panel deemed acceptable the multi-word adverbial in not surprisingly perhaps, because here there is no other place to put the words more than without substantially recasting the sentence.
R. L. Trask uses this example:[65] The sentence can be rewritten to maintain its meaning, however, by using a noun or a different grammatical aspect of the verb, or by avoiding the informal "get rid": Fowler notes that the option of rewriting is always available but questions whether it is always worth the trouble.