Tell ya what–why don’t you just go ahead and dig up some psychology-of-reading studies on the subject and show us some evidence to support this assertion.
Fair enough. But the predominant view on these Boards is that there are no rules for proper English. There are just conventions established by use. “Authorities” are just roadkill. Oh, and watch out for ending sentences with prepositions. 
Given that I am 46, and graduated from both a university (where I ran into my share of idiot professors, including one famous one in my own department of Political Science, who insisted upon grading down for so-called split infinitives), I tend to doubt that you are significantly older, or that a college education was worth something more then than it is now. Stupid can include making poor assumptions. And what in the world does citing from lectures have to do with the price of tea in China. First of all, PROVE that they said anything of the sort in a lecture. Second of all, all that means is one person had that opinion. On the other hand, the sources which have been offered to you to disprove your assertion consist of publications with editorial boards which reach their conclusions through investigation and concensus. In the absence of such equivalent evidence, you are mearly spouting an unsupported opinion. We learned that in university when I was going there, you know, like back when a university education had value. 
Actually, this is incorrect. The construction of the language is usually formalized through the editorial practices of publication houses, newspapers, and the like. Thus, we learn to cite references on the basis of the APA style manual, or the MLA style manual, because it is to those organizations that large numbers of papers are submitted for publication, and they want a consistent style. Lecture halls are for nothing other than letting naive freshmen and sophmores genuflect to the supposed greatness of full professors while half-listening to the drivel they offer, hoping that, when the weekly afternoon TA session comes around, they manage to actually learn something. Nothing is ever “formalized” in a lecture hall. :rolleyes:
As stated above, this is an erroneous assumption.
WHEN you offer something other than “I know of professors who say you shouldn’t split infinitives as a rule” as evidence that that is a correct assertion of the concensus regarding the issue of their use, I’ll accept that there is truly a valid debate on the subject. Otherwise, all you are doing is stating that some people have a belief, a belief not widely accepted, nor, apparently, considered a valid distillation of the general opinion of users of the language, formally or informally, regarding split infinitives. Well, people can have opinions on lots of things, and the perpetuation of incorrect “mythical” rules or truisms is not unusual; it’s the whole purpose to the Straight Dope and this message board to point such things out and dispel them when possible. As is being done in this thread.
I know that you may not like the perjorative adjective attached by me to the situation at hand, but I reiterate: to assert that something is true, without any valid evidence to support the assertion, in the face of significant evidence that the assertion is false, is stupid. See the definition in any dictionary for the word. That is not saying that you are stupid, and someone who uses English regularly should be able to understand that distinction.
Now, moving on briefly to the last point, how things sound: Things sound “right” when they are what you are used to saying. A French person would find it quite unusual to negate things in our language without the equivalent of the negation particle pas. In some parts of this country, the words “to be” are dropped regularly when used in certain constructions, e.g.: “Floor needs mopped.” Such a person would find it weird sounding to say “the floor needs to be mopped,” whereas you and I find the other construction quite grating on the ears. But neither is inherently correct. It’s simply a matter of usage.
And when such rules of usage come into play, insisting upon sticking to artificial and rigid rules of construction risks making you look foolish. Trust me on this, I know. I am a stickler for certain English constructions and usages that others on this board constantly tell me are no longer de rigueur. One need go no further in understanding how this can be true than the classic Winston Churchill quote about ending sentences with prepositions.
If we distill your assertions about split infinitives down to their essence, you are saying that you don’t use split infinitives, except in cases when you do. To assert that you can use the split infinitive when the unsplit version will grate upon the listener’s ears is simply to assert that you will use them when you feel like it, because such an exception allows the truck to be driven through it; it’s so wide a hole my momma could run through it. My opinion on what “grates” is going to be different from your opinion, as evidenced by some of the examples others have thrown up here in the thread.
So yes, there are professors who don’t know what they are talking about, who perpetuate a myth of usage that isn’t supported by authority on the subject, and hasn’t been supported by authority for a very long time. And yes, they may grade you down for what they consider improper usage. In such cases, I learned to follow their rules to protect my grade, all the while keeping in mind that they were a bit less learned than perhaps I had previously thought.
All the talk about lectures seems to be a cry for some type of authority to support the position taken by the OP. I believe the best approach is the one taken by Strunk and White’s “The Elements of Style” (4th ed.) which states that :
There is precedent from the fourtheenth century down for interposing an adverb between *to * and the infinitive it governs, but the construction should be avoided unless the writer wishes to place unusual stress on the adverb (examples omitted)
This seems like good guidance/rule/whatever
I’ve read both aloud here at my computer. Guess what. Are you guessing? Do you already know what the answer is gonna be?
They both sound equally correct to me.
If you want to sidetrack this discussion toward an inquiry into my message board veracity, then I suppose you’re free to do that, but otherwise you need to take a step back and admit that other people have different stylistic opinions than you. I understand that this usage grates on you somehow, but your discomfort with it is irrelevant to this discussion. It bugs you. Fine. But that doesn’t make it incorrect. As QED said, it’s a matter of aesthetics here.
If you continue your disagreement with that, then you might as well sign onto the phlogistan theory of heat while you’re at it. It has just as much evidence going for it as the prescription against split infinitives.
This is also wrong. English departments concentrate on the study of literature and composition, not on the mechanics of grammar which happens to be under the purview of descriptive linguistics. It’s startingly, frankly, how ignorant some “English” teachers are of their own language. We’d all be better off if public school teachers were required to take some actual linguistics courses before they were allowed to teach. We’d avoid a lot of these unfortunate myths.
Of course there are rules. The problem is simply that too many people confuse their own personal dislikes for “proper” usage. The Language Log linguistics blog has an entry that’s required reading on this topic.
A great example of these correctness conditions: We don’t say “dog the”. We say “the dog”, and that’s true for every variety of English spoken on this planet. That is the grammatically correct way to speak and write. The split infinitive does not fall into this case. It is used regularly to avoid ambiguity and also for the simple but crucial matter of taste. To claim that it is improper to use it is simply wrong.
That book, regarded as a “classic” by many, is filled with inconsistencies and downright errors about English grammar and usage. Why, exactly, should this usage be avoided? Because it bothers people like Randy Seltzer? Maybe that’s so if you’re in a situation that requires that you not make any waves whatsoever, but otherwise this is nothing more than S&W suggesting that you limit your options without any real justification.
I’ll lay good odds that I am older than you are. Unlike you, I have spent 30 of the years since college as a professional writer. With some authority of my own, I can say definitively that your statement is one of the most ludicrous misreadings of the workings of the English language I’ve ever seen. There is not even a grain of truth in it that can be an excuse for the excrescences. It is wrong in its entirely.
DSYoungEsq has already taken you apart with fluency and verve but I’ll do the same from my own perspective. (BTW, shouldn’t the Esq in the name have given you a clue that he’s not a college student? And you state that you were in an English department a mere five years ago. Perhaps that’s the core of your problem; you cannot read well enough to determine context from the clues given.)
Good writing is what good writers do. That has been true for the entire history of language. Professors tend to get in the way. The shibboleths of English - the split infinite, ending a sentence with a preposition, not starting a sentence with And or But, and many more - did not come from the writers, but from a set of 19th century professors who looked to Latin as the model. They set down the rules that were adopted as gospel by the infamous old maid English teacher - immortalized in Theodore Bernstein’s usage guide, Miss Thistlebottom’s Hobgoblins - as the one and only “right” way to write English.
A funny thing happened on the way. A few professors began to study English in its entirety: history, usage, grammar, form, meaning. They created a science of linguistics and they demonstrated for all to see that the rules of English were nothing of the sort. They were descriptivists rather than permissivists, but they still managed to destroy any intellectual foundation for the prescriptionist viewpoint. This culminated in Webster’s 3[sup]rd[/sup] International Dictionary in 1961, a descriptivist dictionary that mirrored the usage of the speakers and writers and defined words as one would encounter them. The roar by the prescriptionists was deafening - the classic scene is by Rex Stout, who had Nero Wolfe feed the dictionary to the fire page by page - but reality had crept into the world.
There has been no let-up in the battle since then, but the professors, at least the English professors, have had little to do with it. They are but mortals, mere users themselves, without the formal instruction or knowledge to make statements of anything other than personal preference. I personally have never been in a lecture hall in which any statement on proper grammar was made, but perhaps that was an accident of my bypassing Freshman Comp. Even so, Freshman Comp is in reality a remedial course, an attempt to quickly instill the basics of English that students no longer absorb in high school. It has nothing to do with good writing any more than books of advice for business professionals do. Some people need rules to follow because they can never - nor ever need to - discern the infinite complexities and nuances of written English. I’d rather read prose that follows the “rules” to a nicety than the attempts at flowery English made by the average person.
Good writing is a different beastie. The shibboleths do not apply. The continuum from experimental fiction through expressive essays and invisible “clear” prose to formal academic literature displays a range of voice and style that cannot be confined by arbitrary rules. Even clarity, normally an essential, is often eschewed at the far ends of the continuum.
Simply put, your statement that all you need to know about written English comes from what you learned from your professors in the lecture halls is stupid. That is in fact a mild term. I’ve already used ludicrous. I could take it farther.
By any name it smells not sweet. You are wrong. Your premise is wrong. Your argument is wrong. Your understanding of English is wrong. You implied in post #5 that you may be an English teacher. If so, find a new profession before you do more damage.
cracks knuckles
Okay, let’s break down what I’m saying.
-
The issue has not been decided. Some authorities feel s.i.s are objectionable, others feel differently.
-
Considering the above, there is no reason to use s.i.s except:
a) To provide emphasis where needed
b) To provide clarity where needed
With that in mind, let’s begin.
I had just written in another thread that I graduated from college only a couple of years ago. I slipped and thought that I had posted that on this thread. I had intended for it to be a joke. I am sorry. This is my mistake. I should have read back over the thread to make sure I was clear. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima, maxima culpa.
I was using “lecture hall” as synechdoche. I know nothing gets formalized in lecture hall except undergraduate sleep patterns. Language patterns are formalized in Universities. Which leads us to…
Organizations like these DO formalize language structures. But of whom do you think they are composed? Plumbers? The executive council of the MLA is composed entirely of university professors. The president is a professor of comp lit at Yale. The vice president is a professor of English at UIC. The executive director is a professor of romance languages at Buffalo.
The rules in debate are decided in universities. Quit trying to get around it. And who in the universities decide the rules? The professors.
One of my professors who doesn’t like s.i.s is as decorated as any current member of the MLA exec board, and in fact, is an editor for the Norton Anthology of English Lit. So your sentence is a bit paradoxical. How can a professor suppot an argument that has no support from any authority – when the professor himself is an authority. Reminds me of a certain barber, but I digress.
If you don’t want to give credence to my professors, or if you think I’m lying about them, fine, that’s your prerogative. But if not my professors, why any others? What gives some professors “authority” and others “bugaboo”? Speaking of which, did you actually read any of the cites above?..
…apparently you didnt. You claim that there is significant evidence that my assertion is false. Remember: all I’m claiming is that the debate is still open.
Granted, the wiki leans heavily in favor of the anti-s.i. crowd, but it basically devotes itself to the debate.
On the other hand, no one has presented any cites that claim the issue is closed. These sources do exist, but no one has cited any. I hardly would call the lack of any evidence at all “significant evidence.”
Okay…
So let me get this straight. You’re saying “Floor needs mopped” isn’t inherently incorrect? Um… yes it is. Do I need a cite? Also, who on Earth says that? Some parts of the country? Can I assume from your selection of examples (pertaining to the custodial arts) that you are simply being classist, and you’re saying that this is how uneducated people speak? I’m not going to begin to argue that.
And finally…!
Thank you! I went looking for my *Strunk & White * last night, hoping to appeal to a citable authority (because I did remember that section), but I couldn’t find it. All I could find was my 1959 edition, with no mention of s.i…
It’s like a good Jew joke. I’m Jewish, but I only tell really awful Jew jokes when I’m around either a) 100% Jews, or b) 100% confirmed anti-semites who don’t know I’m Jewish. If there’s a single gentile in there, I get called out for hypocracy.
In a nutshell: avoid split infinitives where they can be avoided (unless you’re sure you’re in the presence of 100% s.i.-supporters). You never know who you’ll offend.
Quick response:
Mapcase -
A few problems.
-I said the structures are formalized in academic institutions. I agree with you that they are formed by writers such as yourself.
-You discount the authority of academics, and then appeal to that very authority in your discussion of the development of the field of linguistics.
-I answer most of your actual arguments in my response to DSYoungEsq’s post.
-Please remain civil. Vitriol thinly masked by flowery speech is not civil. I’ve restrained myself from calling anyone “Mr. Poopy-pants” so far, I’d appreciate it if you did the same.
You forgot c) Whenever you feel like it.
Assuming, of course, that such a thing existed, which, as I’ve already said, I dispute.
Yeah, but I was a curmudgeon even when I was your age. Besides, nobody five years out of college knows enough about English usage to comment on it in a room full of adults. Only decades of experience count.
Your academic reference was to English teachers. Mine was to professors of linguistics. The two groups have been at war for decades. You cannot conflate the two. Nobody outside of academia uses the MLA style guide. The rest of us use the Chicago Manual of Style or the AP’s style manual or the New York Times’ style manual or rely on various self-appointed style authorities or varying competencies. Style guides have little to do with real writing, though. (For one book I was told to use the Chicago Manual and then was handed a sheet of exceptions. Hell with that. Let the copyeditor do it.) Style guides have absolutely nothing to do with headlines on a message board. Or with headlines in general, wherever they appear. Casual and colloquial writing are not restricted by style guides.
Despite your post telling us that most of your words were in a code that only you understand, you continue to be wrong on the main issue.
Let’s start with Fowler’s Modern English Usage from 1926:
Eric Partridges’ Usage and Abusage from 1947:
And perhaps most tellingly, Theodore Bernstein’s The Careful Writer from 1965:
In other words, the best reason for any prohibition of the split infinitive is that stupid people, having been taught by stupid people, will think worse of you. As you did, he said being uncivil. (These words are code for an insult against the position you have taken rather than you as an individual. Code works both ways.)
Any professional writer will tell you that you write appropriately for your audience. If your audience is made up of those who would likely object to the split infinitive, then you do have to make an effort to conform to their expectations.
That audience is a dwindling breed today. People who know and understand the language – and you cannot call Fowler, Partridge, or Bernstein permissivists – have been explaining proper English for decades and it appears to have had an effect. Today’s English is far less formal and rule-driven than the English of 1926 or 1947 or 1965. As it should be.
The issue has been decided. It was decided before you were born. You were taught badly or you just didn’t listen to the right people. However you went wrong, wrong you are. You have no case.
This board has a long history of individuals who start a thread on a topic and refuse to listen when every other person tells them they are wrong. You are in a good company of bad company. None of them enhanced their reputations by the continued insistence that their utterly wrong and wrong-headed position was somehow correct, especially since they, like you, were incapable of providing evidence for said position.
You are better than most of your peers. You are literate. You know terms like synecdoche. You could be impressing us with your wisdom. Why you choose to defend the indefensible as your introduction to us is incomprehensible. Admit that you are wrong. Then try a different topic and see what the response is. You might like it here.
I say that. Me. Right here. That is the dialect of me and my peeps. I’ve said it for as long as I’ve been able to speak.
I didn’t even know that it was non-standard until my sophomore year of college. When I learned, I adjusted my speech patterns accordingly and shifted my higher register usage to the more standard grammatical pattern. But I did not drop my own regional idiosyncrasies from more casual conversations. You have the right of it when you say that “needs V-ed” is incorrect, but only when you’re referring to Standard English usage. When it comes to my own dialect, it is pristine and unimpeachable language.
So: I would not say “it needs done” during a job interview. I would say it only after I got hired.
If you had taken the time to read Geoff Pullum’s explanation of correctness conditions, you would perhaps start to grasp what criteria linguists (language scientists) employ when they determine what’s standard and what’s not. Unfortunately for you, these rules do not come from the linguistic biases of you and people like you. They come rather from careful observation of the speech patterns of countless people.
Standard American English is the language of the majority of educated speakers across the country. And the most important part here, so pay close attention:
If a prescriptive rule is contrary to the usage of actual speakers, it is the rule that is incorrect, and not the speakers.
Note that you might have a case that unnecessary use of the split infinitive is an aesthetically displeasing choice and should thus be avoided. But that is not a judgement about what’s “correct”, and instead is a judgement about what’s “best”. Be aware, though, that such value judgements are entirely subjective, and that some people might disagree with them. As someone who spends a great deal of time reading about linguistics issues, I have a reasonably well informed opinion about this, and I disagree quite strongly with anyone who would make an aesthetic case here.
Your whole problem with this thread is your arrogant refusal to acknowledge that your own personal taste (along with that of others who happen to agree with you) deserves some special merit or consideration as a formal and correct grammatical rule of the language. This is not so. This will never be so. I’m aware that you’ve found “debate” of a sort on this, but there is also a similar kind of debate about things like evolutionary theory and the age of the universe.
One side has evidence of real English, as spoken and written by real people. The other side has recommendations about how language should be used. These recommendations are sometimes very good and occasionally excellent, as even the most descriptive of linguists would admit. But they are still recommendations, and not rules. And if some confused soul mistakes these recommendations for something more definite and concrete, then it is not our job (as fighters of ignorance) to pander to that misconception, but rather to correct it.
And I don’t even know why I keep writing when a professional like Expano enters a thread. Listen to him, and see the light. I put enough effort into this post, though, so I ain’t gonna delete it.
Submit!
-From post #2
Holy crap: it just occurred to me - does Cecil write his own headlines? If he does, then some (tiny fraction of a) portion this pile-on must have been caused by my blatant heresy.
Fine! I’m starting to feel like a troll anyway. God, I have myriad parting shots, but I don’t want to provoke any more bile. I’ve been lurking this board for months, and I don’t want to make any (more) enemies in case I decide to join.
Anyone else may have the last word. Or, if you really want to continue the debate, post here and we can press on in some other format.
Grits teeth to keep from answering any more arguments…
Here is a novel thought to leave with: just because a professor says it is so doesn’t make it so. You might want to take that to heart. 
No parting shots necessary. Just respond to post #21.
I am no writer or linguistics professor. I am just a regular person. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this thread and have nothing more to add except that language is alive. It’s constantly evolving. Clearly, I am with the pro-split infinitive group.
Floor needs mopped? I’ve never heard of this type of construction. I’ve certainly heard “floor needs mopping” though. What parts of the country would that construction be normal? Just wondering.
Anyway, continue…
Sorry for the double post but this doesn’t sound like a half bad idea…
That particular atrocity is very common in the midwest and in the south, and I seem to hear it more often every year. And from people who definitely should know better. I hear “It needs fixed”, “It needs painted”, “It needs cleaned” and suchlike from so many people that it makes my gorge become buoyant. But when I heard “It needs ran”, my head almost exploded. (This from a college graduate, no less.) Others present didn’t even bother to “correct” it to “It needs run.”
I got 198 hits on google for “floor needs mopped.” I suppose you don’t need a cite for inherently incorrect, but you do need to explain. What is inherently wrong with it? Sounds fine to me.
What the poster meant was that it is incorrect grammar. Which, by the book, it is. One is supposed to say, “the floor needs to be mopped.” That’s what gets taught in an English class.
But the whole point is that, if everyone in an area says it “floor needs mopped,” then it’s hardly incorrect for those people. Thus, the difference between prescriptive rules for grammar and rules that are descriptive.
Sounds fine to me, too, but I doubt that such a construction appears commonly, if at all, in edited text (in contrast to, say, the split infinitive, which one can find near anywhere). I did a Lexis-Nexis search for “needs cleaned” and every single result from the first page, every one, shot back some form of “needs to be cleaned”. So while “needs verbed” is perfectly fine in my own dialect, I wouldn’t try to argue that it is Standard English in any way. The evidence just doesn’t exist to support that assertion. If you are attempting to write in formal written English, I think we’re forced to conclude that “needs mopped” is incorrect.
To claim that it is an “atrocity”, though, is simply ridiculous.
Seriously, we’d all be better off if our English teachers knew some linguistics. We’d avoid the silliness like this if people realized that everybody speaks grammatically given the variations of their own dialects. We would then agree to speak a more standard language when appropriate not because it is more “correct” (which is to laugh) but because it makes interactions easier and less confusing. We might also, then, be able to appreciate the fascinating variations in English instead of hearing ignorant complaints about hickspeak or ebonics or whatever. It’s time we learned that biology isn’t the only field where American science education doesn’t do too well.