The Queen’s English: Stray Notes on Speaking and Spelling was published in the late 19th century by Henry Alford, Dean of Canterbury. In addition to his theory on infinitives and why English users shouldn’t split them, his book boasts such headings as “Talking nonsense to children”, “Deterioration of the language itself”, and “Cases not understood”. Despite his misunderstanding of traditional capitalization rules, this man has been credited with originally stating that speakers and writers of English are most certainly not allowed to carelessly split an infinitive. Alford based his understanding of grammar on traditional Latin rules and states in his work that English users were not familiar with utilizing the construction of a split infinitive, so as future writers and speakers, we should avoid the anomaly completely. “But surely this is a practice entirely unknown to English speakers and writers,” Alford states. “There seems no good reason for flying in the face of common usage” (171). According to Alford, unfamiliarity insinuated a dismissible mistake.
Infinitives themselves have an interesting history. In Old English, the infinitive was a single word that ended in –n or –an. This eventually evolved into Middle English’s infinitive that ended in –n or –en. These archaic endings eventually dropped off, leaving just the verb stem. Today’s Modern English regards infinitives as two words—the verb itself with “to” preceding the action word immediately. There is still some debate today about what an infinitive actually consists of. For example, there are many who believe that “to” is not really part of an infinitive at all and argue that this means there isn’t anything to split in the first place. Danish linguist Otto Jespersen said this of infinitives sometime in the late 19th to early 20th century, ‘“To’ is no more an essential part of an infinitive than the definite article is an essential part of a nominative, and no one would think of calling ‘the good man’ a split nominative.” However, despite the disagreement of what constitutes an infinitive itself, the first record of a split infinitive occurs in writing from the 13th century. According to scholars who have analyzed the work, this Middle English narrative is said to have used the split or “cleft” infinitive strictly for the purpose of flow and rhythm. Today, we use the split infinitive similarly—usually to enhance the flow of our writing for our readers or to stress a specific point in oral discourse. For example, I might write that to understand English prescriptive grammar rules, we must go back and look at traditional Latin grammar. But I might want to emphasize understanding—to fully understand, to really understand, to completely understand, etc.
We’ve come quite a way from the 19th century fear of the split infinitive. The construction is now widely accepted in written and spoken English discourse and many grammarians regard the rule as archaic. However, there are still those that choose to unrelentingly hold onto the rule. Many middle and high school teachers in the American education system still teach their students to avoid the split infinitive. In my experience in Texas public schools, I was always told to avoid the cleft infinitive in my writing, but was never given a substantial reason as to why it was wrong—it was just something that “sophisticated” teenage writers didn’t do. I was always told that “no split infinitives” was the rule someone had decided on centuries ago. However, in my first writing class in college, I was told that everything my previous English teachers had told me was incorrect and that there wasn’t anything wrong with using some of the typical writing “taboos.” This being the case, it seems that there is still some debate in the high school grammar community surrounding this rule and its usage; however, it seems like the majority of the academics I come into contact with now generally believe the no split infinitive rule is outdated and perfectly okay to break. So why are the majority of middle and high school English teachers still teaching this archaic rule to their grammar students? While I don’t have a definitive answer, I theorize that it stems from an attitude much like Alford’s. The rule has been taught for so many centuries that it has become familiar, and there’s comfort in that. Teachers urge students to stick to this “norm” because that’s what one man stated of English grammar hundreds of years ago. I’m not sure whether it’s more linguistic or psychological in nature, but something is surely telling today’s educators that the “basics” of English grammar are unwavering and leave no room for contemporary interpretation. This is an unfortunate attitude and sets students up for a lifetime of grammatical confusion.
According to The Chicago Manual of Style, “it is now widely acknowledged that adverbs sometimes justifiably separate infinitive’s to from its principal verb.” This not only justifies the cleft infinitive, but also asserts that the infinitive does in fact consist of “to”. “When an adverb qualifies a verb phrase, the natural place for the adverb is between the auxiliary verb and the principal verb. There is no rule against adverbial modifiers between the parts of a verb phrase. In fact, it’s typically preferable to put them there.” Furthermore, The American Heritage Book of English Usage says that “people have been splitting infinitives since the 14th century, and some of the most noteworthy splitters include John Donne, Samuel Pepys, Daniel Defoe, Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Johnson, William Wordsworth, Abraham Lincoln, George Eliot, Henry James and Willa Cather. The only rationale for condemning the construction is based on a false analogy with Latin. The thinking lies in the fact that the Latin infinitive is a single word, so the English infinitive should be treated as if it were a single unit. But English is not Latin… (34-35).
Repeat after me: English is not Latin, English is not Latin, English is not Latin. This is what we need to be teaching our future writers, speakers, linguists, and grammarians. The rule prohibiting split infinitives is an outdated thing of the past that was never rooted in English grammar in the first place. Despite centuries of controversy, today’s foremost authorities on English usage and written and spoken discourse, all draw the same conclusion: there is nothing wrong with making the choice to confidently split an infinitive.
Works Cited
Alford, Henry. The Queen’s English: Stray Notes on Speaking and Spelling. Cambridge: Deighton, Bell, 1864. Google Books. Web. 28 Sept. 2015.
Fogarty, Mignon. “Split Infinitives.” Quick and Dirty Tips. Macmillan Holdings, LLC., 2015. Web. 30 Sept. 2015
Garner, Bryan A. “5.106 Split Infinitive.” The Chicago Manual of Style Online. 16th ed. Chicago: U of Chicago, 2010. N. pag. Print.
Garner, Bryan A. “5.168 Adverb Within A Verb Phrase.” The Chicago Manual of Style Online. 16th ed. Chicago: U of Chicago, 2010. N. pag. Print.
“Split Infinitive.” The American Heritage Book of English Usage. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Compacy, 1996. 34-35. Print.
UT English Lit Major 