Saturday, November 18, 2006

The Split Infinitive, Part 2

Thanks to the very wise alienvoord, I was alerted to the info on Wikipedia about Split Infinitives. Wickipedia is so great for things like this. Not only does it define "Split Infinitive" (when a word or a phrase occurs between the marker "to" and a verb), but it informed me of two things I didn't know: 1) this is not officially wrong (although it has caused much disagreement) and 2) the word "to" has to be involved, therefore all the "hidden" split infinitives I created in the previous post aren't really right because they were just split action phrases that didn't actually have the word "to" in them.

So therefore, my boss and his henchman are both wrong. Split infinitives aren't wrong, and most of the phrases they were correcting aren't actually split infinitives anyway.

Therefore I win.

Except Tink really wins, because she never found my "hidden" split infinitives in my previous post - they weren't really there. So therefore SHE is president of the Split Infinitives club and as Vice President (that's me, I declare it) I deem her responsible for the club's primary concern of spreading the Glory of the Legal Split Infinitive, starting with my boss and his henchman. Meanwhile, I will run in the opposite direction firing off split infinitives to innocent bystanders in every direction.

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