I think the problem with split infinitives is they have a basic di-DAH-di-DAH rhythm which, once you have dropped into it, is rather habit-forming and difficult to break out of.* (I remember one of the old AD&D handbooks seemed to adopt it as a writing style and after a while it ended up being somewhat comical, like a teenager trying oh-so-hard to look ‘cool’.) But used occasionally, and very sparingly, it can give just the effect you want, the right rhythym to the prose, where following the ‘rules’ would be less effective or (as glenda says) just sound downright awkward.

If the Star Trek writers had opted for ‘Boldly to go’ (a more complex spoken rhythym, DAH-di-di-dah, more ‘falling’ than ‘rising’) I wonder whether it would have been so memorable in popular culture.

* yeah, maybe I just broke a rule there too, heh.

Great book; I think I got it for my birthday (along with another, similar book) and loved it.

IIRC, the don’t-end-with-preposition and don’t-split-infinitives “rules” were bogus inventions of someone writing up grammar rules for English based on Latin (why on earth?!), where it’s not possible to do such things. How silly is that? (Hopefully that’s not an urban legend….)

I suspect you are right, Cheryl. Which is sad. Although rules can and often have been in the past carried to stupid extremes, their aim is clear communication, and we drop too many of them at risk of confusion.

The rules I hate are the ones where, when you follow them, you end up sounding wrong, even if when you are grammatically correct.

When my mother was at school kids were taught a whole pile of “rules” that made very little sense, many of which were regularly broken by Shakespeare and even Dickens.

When I was at school such rules were starting to go out of fashion, but being able to spell, use the correct word and communicate clearly were regarded as vital to your career success.

These days, who cares? I have pretty much given up trying to teach work colleagues the difference between “affect” and “effect”, for example. I regularly see business reports and presentations that, even though written with the spell checker enabled, are full of spelling and grammatical mistakes, and invented words (and I mean words invented by the writer, not business jargon). No one seems to care. I suspect it won’t be long before I start getting told that pointing out other people’s errors is evidence that I am “not a team player”.

For me the rules are more guidelines … I avoid crossing them too often, but don’t consider it a capital offence if I do. ;P