Split Infinitives

Splitting Infinitives

Almost no one recognizes split infinitives.

An infinitive is a verb form often preceded by the word to. For example, "It’s a good idea to plan your writing." and "I asked my students to write an essay." To split an infinitive means to write an adverb or other element between the word to and the verb. For example, some contend that the phrase "to boldly go where no one has gone before" is incorrect because the adverb boldly separates the word to from the verb go.

According to the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (Third Edition, 1992), people writing in English have split infinitives since the 14^th century. However, in the 19^th century, grammarians began to condemn this usage. The Usage Panel goes on to say "No plausible rationale has ever been advanced for the rule, though it may arise from a hazy notion that because the Latin infinitive is a single word, the equivalent English construction must be treated as if it were indivisible."

The Usage Panel points out that writers are sometime wise not to split an infinitive—some sentences are clearer when an adverb is elsewhere than between to and the verb. However, they also point out that the attempt to avoid splitting the infinitive can sometimes have unfortunate results. They say that in "We expect our output to more than double in a year," the phrase "more than" is intrinsic to the sense of the infinitive phrase. "Only to call Mary…." "To only call Mary…." and "To call only Mary…." obviously mean three different things.

Charlie Einstein in his stylebook How to Communicate, points out that, if you follow this "rule" against splitting infinitives, you needlessly confuse sentences such as "I told him to clearly translate written queries from the Syrian, Bulgarian, and Nigerian delegations, as well as the British."

In The Write Way, Richard Lederer and Richard Downs say writers who have split infinitives include Sir Philip Sidney, John Donne, Samuel Pepys, Samuel Johnson, George Eliot, Matthew Arnold, Thomas Hardy, Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Emily Dickinson, and Henry James.

Lederer and Downs quote James Thurber as writing, "When I split an infinitive, it is going to damn well stay split." They also contend that George Bernard Shaw wrote to the Times of London about someone who had changed the split infinitives in Shaw’s writing, saying, "I call for the immediate dismissal of this pedant. It is of no consequence whether he decides to go quickly or to quickly go or quickly to go. The important thing is that he should go at once."