You Can’t Split Infinitives

Many people say your sentences shouldn’t contain a split infinitive. In my early years of school, teachers drummed this rule into students’ heads—usually right after ensuring they wouldn’t end sentences with prepositions. Let’s first look at the issue of spit infinitives, and then we’ll show why it isn’t an issue.

I realize I said I wouldn’t resort to grammar terms, but some things demand it.

You know what a split infinitive is; you simply may not know why it’s called that. An infinitive is a verb in its simplest form coupled with the word to. Examples are “to talk,” “to eat,” “to be,” “to see,” etc. When people say you shouldn’t split infinitives, they mean you shouldn’t put words between to and the verb.
Perhaps the most discussed example of this is the lead-in to the 1960s Star Trek show: “To boldly go where no man has gone before.”

Grammar purists insist it should be “To go boldly . . .” stating that boldly is splitting the infinitive. The problem is that there isn’t a hard-and-fast rule against splitting an infinitive. In fact, many people believe it sounds more natural not to split them (in some circumstances).

It may not sound better in all cases, but my opinion is if you like a sentence better with the infinitive split, then split away. If not, change it.

You can see more about a related subject—splitting a compound verb—in the chapter dealing with that.

Split Infinitive

In order to better understand why splitting infinitives isn’t such a grave sin, just listen to everyday speech. You’ll hear them used a lot, and often, they not only don’t sound bad, they sound normal.

Think of the phrase “to magically appear.” It sounds fine. It sounds better than the grammatically correct “to appear magically.”

But so does the split infinitive I slipped in at the beginning of the previous paragraph: “to better understand.”

Or consider the following, which I read on the Science Daily site in a blog discussing the opioid crisis.

. . . population of residents ages 65 and older is expected to more than double by 2030 . . .

You would be hard pressed to rearrange that sentence by placing “more than” somewhere else and have it still make sense and keep the same meaning.
I saw a similar example in a financial report for a new tech company where the analyst said, “. . . profits increased to greater than anticipated results . . .” (split verb)

There’s nothing wrong with split infinitives. In many cases, they sound better. And in some cases, like the two above show, they’re necessary.

 If you know someone who will enjoy this, please share.

Giacomo Giammatteo is the author of gritty crime dramas about murder, mystery, and family. And he also writes nonfiction books including the No Mistakes Careers series as well as books about grammar, publishing., and children’s fiction and nonfiction.

When Giacomo isn’t writing, he’s helping his wife take care of the animals on their sanctuary. At last count, they had forty animals—seven dogs, one horse, six cats, and twenty-five pigs.

Oh, and one crazy—and very large—wild boar, who used to take walks with Giacomo every day.

He lives in Texas, where he and his wife have an animal sanctuary with forty loving “friends.“

Tags: grammar, writing