Sans Fig Leaf
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"To split or not to split?"
2 August, 2007
Henry Alford was born in 1810 in London, the son of a vicar. His mother died in childbirth, so he was raised solely by his reclusive and scholarly father--who was also his primary teacher. He wrote his first book at the age of six. By the age of eight he had written a collection of Latin poetry.
Since his father, grandfather, great-grandfather, great-great-grandfather, and even great-great-great-grandfather had all been clergymen (not to mention several uncles, great-uncles, et cetera), it should have come as no shock that Henry took holy orders while at Cambridge, and became both a clergyman and a teacher. Many of his pupils went on to greatness, and Henry himself eventually became Dean of Canterbury.
He wrote a rather large number of books on far-ranging subjects. Encyclopedia entries on him (and other articles) usually mention his translation and commentary of the Greek New Testatment as his greatest work. If by "greatest" they mean the work of highest quality, or most remarkable, they may be correct.
But if by "greatest" they mean largest or most far-reaching contribution, they are completely wrong.
Because one of those other books Alford wrote, The Queen's English (which consisted of guidelines and suggestions about writing, grammar, and usage of English) included an invention of Alford's that swept the writing world. Since his book was published, his invention has been quoted by countless school teachers, self-appointed-grammarians, and punctilious ladies in pink sweaters (looking disapprovingly down their noses through their reading spectacles). Alford made up, entirely from his own imagination, a "rule" of grammar that had never existed in English before:
The prohibition on the split-infinitive.
Most native speakers of English, including many highly-educated people, probably don't know what an infinitive is, let alone how you would split one. The phrase conjures images of editors and writers in lab coats gathered around an enormous machine with "Warning! Radioactive!" labels on it, trying to split an infinitive as if it were an atom.
An infinitive is a simple verb form usually proceeded by "to," such as "to go," "to talk," "to leave," or "to analyze." A split infinitive is when you allow another word or words to slip in between the "to" and the other half of the infinitive. A famous modern example being: "To boldly go where no one has gone before." The word "boldly" splits "to" from "go," splitting the infinitive. According to Alford's rule, the correct way to phrase it is "To go boldly…."
There's nothing wrong with rephrasing that example to un-split the infinitive. Some split infinitives are confusing or awkward, so they should be rephrased. However, sometimes trying to un-split an infinitive changes the meaning of a sentence or introduces ambiguity. Imagine that someone wrote "He decided to promptly return the money he found." Now imagine someone else decides it must be rephrased because of the split infinitive.
He decided to return the money he found promptly.
He promptly decided to return the money he found.
He decided promptly to return the money he found.
While the split infinitive version clearly says that it is the return which will be prompt, each of the other sentences could be interpretted another way. For example, only money which is found promptly will be returned, and he might take his sweet time to do it.
What sets my teeth grinding is when someone insists that the split infinitive is wrong in an absolute sense--usually implying that anyone who doesn't already see it that way is a moron. These folks can be so loud-spoken, that a former editor of the Chicago Manual of Style once wrote that those who insist upon the rule are small-minded pedants whose only joy in life is to demonstrate their own mental superiority by belittling the people who don't know the rule.
Which isn't entirely accurate, and to the extent that it is true, hardly exclusive to that group. There are people who just as rudely campaign against the rule. Which is probably why the editors of the a recent edition of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language try to sidestep the controversy by arguing that infinitives don't actually exist as a separate category in English. Unlike other languages, such as Latin, the infinitive verb in English is exactly the same form used in imperative and present-subjunctive cases. Nobody has ever objected to a split imperative, so why worry about the infinitive?
Some may say that's just splitting hairs, but that's better than splitting heads, right?
Grammar isn't the only place where people learn "rules" which they then try to force on everyone else. No matter how obscure or ridiculous, the rules themselves are seldom as troublesome as the lengths to which some people will go to enforce them. For instance, this recent crackdown in Iran on woman wearing un-Islamic clothing, or men having un-Islamic hairstyles. Or officials in Singapore and Rome arresting gay men for a quick kiss in a public place.
The story of the split infinitive offers an important lesson in this regard. Even if we were to accept that Alford's original pronouncement made sense when he wrote The Queen's English, it seems foolish to simply accept the rule and pass it on to future generations without at least asking if it's still applicable. In 1854 no one thought it at all odd for a man to go into exactly the same profession that his family had been in for five generations. On the contrary, it was considered admirable. It was even thought that you were more likely to be good at a job because your father, grandfather, and so on had held the same job.
We've given up the notion that someone is qualified for a job simply because their parent held it previously. We don't think it civilized to arrest people because of their hairstyle. Can we at least consider the possibility that who someone loves, how they dress, how they worship, or whether they split infinitives can all be matters of choice?
--Henry David Thoreau
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