Urth Digest, Vol 59, Issue 24

The wikipedia article sites a number of sources, as in this 1: ^ Walsh, Bill (2000). Contemporary Books. ed. Lapsing into a comma : a curmudgeon?s guide to the many things that can go wrong in print and how to avoid them. Lincolnwood, Illinois: Contemporary Books. pp. 112?113. ISBN 0809225352. in this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split_infinitive#cite_note-Walsh112-1 I too learned that 19th century grammarians introduced the skepticism regarding the split infinitive. To my mind, it's not unlike the large number of words lifted directly from Latin and deposited in the English vocabulary in the 16th and 17th centuries as part of the Enlightenment's fascination with the ancient world. Anything Latinate had to be better than anything Anglo-Saxon. The same can be said for words of French origin - as the language of the ruling class in England, it's words were seen as higher culture and therefore more preferable to the Anglo-Saxon roots. As a usage question, that's exactly what it comes down to: how do people actually speak and write? Our rules are like laws, they change over time, and rules are made to be broken. To my mind, if a split infinitive severely hampers a sentence's clarity, it should be rewritten. Otherwise it's 100% kosher. Them's my two cents. -Robin Dunn

I must disagree. Split infinitives are something up with which I will not put. Dan PS: :-)

to boldly split...