# Why Aren't You Supposed to 'Split' Your Infinitives? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 20, 2005, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-you-supposed-to-split-your-infinitives/313357 "2005-07-20T21:54:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e47c2d/32.png) [@Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2005, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-you-supposed-to-split-your-infinitives/313357/21 "2005-07-21T21:36:06Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > Double negatives are not inherently illogical or confusing. In many languages double negatives are required constructions: In Polish, for example, you’d say “Nie mam nic,” literally, “I don’t have nothing” to express the idea “I don’t have anything.” You cannot form the sentence grammatically using the latter structure. Same goes for the rest of the Slavic languages. Same for Hungarian. Same for many other languages in the world. Spanish, too. I’m thinking of the Santana song that goes, in non-standard English: _I ain’t got nobody That I can depend on_ …and then repeats, in perfectly correct Spanish: _ **No** tengo a **nadie**!_ ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2005, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-you-supposed-to-split-your-infinitives/313357/22 "2005-07-21T21:36:30Z")
> [@Jim B.](#): > > But why aren’t you supposed to split your infinitives? The real question here is: Why aren’t you supposed to **really** split your infinitives? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2005, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-you-supposed-to-split-your-infinitives/313357/23 "2005-07-21T22:02:45Z")
> [@](#): > > In many languages double negatives are required constructions: In Polish, for example, you’d say “Nie mam nic,” literally, “I don’t have nothing” to express the idea “I don’t have anything.” You cannot form the sentence grammatically using the latter structure. I’ve seen this argument several times, and I don’t agree with it. If “nie” or “nic” by itself would be ungrammatical, then the literal translation would not be “I don’t have nothing”. Neither “nie” nor “nic” by themselves is a negative, only their combination, so one would more correctly consider the construction “nie…nic” to translate literally to “not”. Meanwhile, I would argue that it is not only inadmissable to split infinitives in English, it’s also impossible. “To boldly go” is not a split of the infinitive “to go”, it’s the proper, unsplit infinitive of the verb “boldly go” (“boldly go” itself being a compound verb composed of the adverb “boldly” and the primitive verb “go”). **InvisibleWombat** , the example you describe is not a double negative, and nor is it illogical. It’s the standard English construction for asking a sentence with an implied answer. The sentence has the same denotation as “Did you do XYZ”, but with the implication attached that the answer is yes. Do you know of any more elegant way to express the same idea? ---
**Author:** ![sundog66](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@sundog66](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sundog66)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2005, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-you-supposed-to-split-your-infinitives/313357/24 "2005-07-21T22:15:38Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Neither “nie” nor “nic” by themselves is a negative I disagree. Polish speakers, correct me if I’m wrong, but I would imagine that “nie” is acceptable as a stand-alone negative response to “Do you have anything?”, and that “nic” is acceptable as a stand-alone negative response to “What do you have?” Cf. Spanish “no” and “nada”. ---
**Author:** ![SlyFrog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a3d4f5/32.png) [@SlyFrog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlyFrog)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2005, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-you-supposed-to-split-your-infinitives/313357/25 "2005-07-21T22:26:25Z")
> [@InvisibleWombat](#): > > Double negatives are simply bad logic. I do not understand why lawyers love double negatives and questions phrased in the negative so much. I did have fun with an attorney in a deposition once. > > ATTY: Isn’t it true that you did XYZ? > Me: Yes, it isn’t. > ATTY: What? I think it would be hilarious had the reporter records this as: ATTY: Isn’t it true that you did XYZ? You: Yes. It isn’t . . . . [Deponent did not finish speaking] ATTY: What? ---
**Author:** ![Zoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a4c791/32.png) [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2005, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-you-supposed-to-split-your-infinitives/313357/26 "2005-07-21T23:47:28Z")
Norman Mailer boldly split an infinitive in the opening sentence of one of his books about ten or fifteen years ago. The Language Gods surrendered. At about the same time the LGs also began allowing Americans to add an _e_ to the spelling of _judgment_ if they choose. Notice that I left out the apostrophe in _LGs_. Forty years ago I couldn’t have gotten away with that. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2005, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-you-supposed-to-split-your-infinitives/313357/27 "2005-07-22T00:10:23Z")
> [@Balthisar](#): > > And on the final epsidode of _Enterprise_ they used “man” again. Just mentioning it because it was so non-PC-jarring to hear. FWIW in Germanic languages, the word “man” and its cognates originally did mean “human being” or “humanity”. The genderized words were, in modern terms, _were_, as in _werewolf_ (man-wolf), and _wife_, which then meant any adult woman married or not. I do wish that, before deciding to trash terms for their political uncorrectness, people would have inquired into the true meaning and history of such words. We now have to say “people”, and it just doesn’t carry the same weight. ---
**Author:** ![blackhobyah](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/41988e/32.png) [@blackhobyah](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blackhobyah)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2005, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-you-supposed-to-split-your-infinitives/313357/28 "2005-07-22T01:16:17Z")
> [@Zoe](#): > > Notice that I left out the apostrophe in _LGs_. Forty years ago I couldn’t have gotten away with that. Yeah you could, because there shouldn’t be an apostrophe there in the first place. It’s a plural, not a possessive or a contraction. And I think both of the OP’s sentence read badly … I would choose, “The right of the people to assemble peaceably” which not only doesn’t split an infinitive, but, to this pedant’s ear, reads better. ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2005, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-you-supposed-to-split-your-infinitives/313357/29 "2005-07-22T02:29:11Z")
> [@Spectre of Pithecanthropus](#): > > FWIW in Germanic languages, the word “man” and its cognates originally did mean “human being” or “humanity”. The genderized words were, in modern terms, _were_, as in _werewolf_ (man-wolf), and _wife_, which then meant any adult woman married or not. I do wish that, before deciding to trash terms for their political uncorrectness, people would have inquired into the true meaning and history of such words. We now have to say “people”, and it just doesn’t carry the same weight. Such a bizarre thing when people look to usages of hundreds of years ago and insist that whatever the words _do_ mean today, they _should_ mean what they meant in the time of Chaucer. In the period you’re describing, there were three words altogether: one that described male humans (some sort of compound including, as you say, “were” - something like “wereman” but I don’t remember the spelling exactly), one that described female humans (“wifman”, the origin of the modern “woman”), and just the bare “man”, meaning human being. However, for whatever reason, the male version passed from the vocabulary, and the word “man” thus picked up two rather contradictory meanings: man including woman, and man as opposed to woman (all you logic fetishists should go into seizures at that!) What a word meant hundreds of years ago is not relevant to its “true meaning”, as there’s no rationale to arbitrarily designate a single point as the period where words bore their “true meanings.” Whatever the word meant way back when, it now specifically connotes maleness. This division is interesting, because it parallels the typical functioning in languages that have only a masculine and feminine gender. The masculine form became the default form, and the feminine one was “marked” - it acquired a sense of being a deviation from the norm. (Evidence for the markedness of feminine forms exists in the Romance languages, which have only two genders. A plural noun describing people is masculine - it’s in the default form - unless it describes a group containing _only_ females.) Languages change, and it’s completely irrational to claim that the usage of hundreds of years ago is relevant today - compare Shakespeare’s Early Modern English with our own Late Modern English and see just how much the language has changed in a far shorter period of time than the span since “wereman” passed out of existence. In fact, Webster’s 1913 dictionary describes “cute” as meaning “Clever; sharp; shrewd; ingenious; cunning” and notes that it’s a colloquial form of “acute.” Should we stop using it in its current usage because of that? The usage of “man” to represent the whole of humanity is logically bizarre, but more importantly it simply doesn’t meet the needs of modern language users, since we are disinclined to consider females a deviation from normal maleness. Of course the use of “man” as a general term for humanity rankles nowadays. Languages change as the social milieu changes, and there’s nothing rational in trying to stop that from happening. ---
**Author:** ![ShibbOleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/848f3c/32.png) [@ShibbOleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ShibbOleth)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2005, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-you-supposed-to-split-your-infinitives/313357/30 "2005-07-22T02:34:36Z")
Man finally split the infinitive in the first half of the twentieth century. The awesome power of this feat, at the time, threatened to destroy humanity. Since then, safer methods of achieving a renewable source of debate have been found. ---
**Author:** ![yBeayf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/e274bd/32.png) [@yBeayf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yBeayf)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2005, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-you-supposed-to-split-your-infinitives/313357/31 "2005-07-22T03:20:38Z")
> [@](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > Neither “nie” nor “nic” by themselves is a negative > > I disagree. Polish speakers, correct me if I’m wrong, but I would imagine that “nie” is acceptable as a stand-alone negative response to “Do you have anything?”, and that “nic” is acceptable as a stand-alone negative response to “What do you have?” Cf. Spanish “no” and “nada”. Not Polish here, but Russian, which operates the same way: “У меня не есть ничего” is “I don’t have anything.” “Не” is the word for “no”, and “Ничего” is the word for “nothing”. If someone asked me what I had (“Что у вас?”) and I had nothing, I would answer “Ничего”. And if I wished to negate another sentence, such as to say “I’m not working”, I would use “не”, as in “Я не работаю”. If I said “У меня не есть что-нибудь”, (“I don’t have anything”), it would be understandable, but definitely incorrect. ---
**Author:** ![Snooooopy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@Snooooopy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snooooopy)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2005, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-you-supposed-to-split-your-infinitives/313357/32 "2005-07-22T03:29:04Z")
I remember seeing on the news one night an item about how the Oxford English Dictionary had finally decided that split infinitives were OK. I was amused that a newscast would go to the trouble of mentioning it. ---
**Author:** ![snailboy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/97f17d/32.png) [@snailboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snailboy)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2005, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-you-supposed-to-split-your-infinitives/313357/33 "2005-07-22T05:12:38Z")
> [@Excalibre](#): > > Languages change, and it’s completely irrational to claim that the usage of hundreds of years ago is relevant today… Languages change. The use of the word _man_ to mean a person regardless of gender has not. It may not be as common as it used to be, but it’s still correct. I don’t know what defines English in your book, but people obviously still use it and the [dictionary](http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=man) agrees with them. Note that the relevant definitions in this case (2 through 4) aren’t marked as archaic or informal either. At this rate, it may be some day, but not today. ---
**Author:** ![Strinka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/strinka/32/512_2.png) [@Strinka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Strinka)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2005, 6:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-you-supposed-to-split-your-infinitives/313357/34 "2005-07-22T06:58:27Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > Yeah, but does anybody really want to argue that when Mick Jagger sings “I can’t get no satisfaction,” he really means he does get satisfaction? Ah, but that is actually not a double negative. You see “can” can be rephrased as “is able to”. So, “I can” means the same thing as “I am able to”. “Can’t” can’t be rephrased as “is able to not”. It is rephrased as “is unable to”. So “I can’t not” means in positive terms “I must” not “I can”. Of course, that’s not what he means saying that but… ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2005, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-you-supposed-to-split-your-infinitives/313357/35 "2005-07-22T12:28:15Z")
It’s really bizarre that nobody would argue that “whites” includes blacks, nobody would argue that “boys” includes girls and nobody would argue that “women” includes “men.” Yet Bible thumpers and lots of other (male) people will scream to their dying day that “man” includes “women.” ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2005, 12:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-you-supposed-to-split-your-infinitives/313357/36 "2005-07-22T12:53:12Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > I’ve seen this argument several times, and I don’t agree with it. If “nie” or “nic” by itself would be ungrammatical, then the literal translation would not be “I don’t have nothing”. Neither “nie” nor “nic” by themselves is a negative, only their combination, so one would more correctly consider the construction “nie…nic” to translate literally to “not”. This is incorrect. “Nie” and “nic” are not like the “ne…pas” construction in French, which you’re probably confusing it with. “Nie” means “no.” “Nic” means “nothing.” Both can and do stand alone. For example, “Nie chcem” means “I don’t want (it).” “Co tam?” (What’s up?) Answer: “Nic.” “Nothing.” ---
**Author:** ![Jinx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/c6cbf5/32.png) [@Jinx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jinx)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2005, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-you-supposed-to-split-your-infinitives/313357/37 "2005-07-22T13:17:28Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > You can. It’s all just a bit of leftover grammar voodoo. I don’t think you can find a single grammarian who would insist on not splitting infinitives. > > As for why? Some idiot decided that English should follow Latin grammar and since you can’t split infinitives in Latin, you shouldn’t in English. Well, thing is, in Latin infinitives consist of a single word, so you couldn’t split them if you tried. How could the split infinitive rule have originated with Latin if, as you say, infinitives were one word, anyhow? That just doesn’t make any sense. It must have started with older English, and it stuck. Besides, didn’t Latin have a strange sentence structure where the meaning of a sentence was highly dependent on word order…as opposed to today’s English’s subject-predicate structure… - Jinx 😕 ---
**Author:** ![yBeayf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/e274bd/32.png) [@yBeayf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yBeayf)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2005, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-you-supposed-to-split-your-infinitives/313357/38 "2005-07-22T13:26:40Z")
> [@](#): > > Besides, didn’t Latin have a strange sentence structure where the meaning of a sentence was highly dependent on word order Just the opposite. Latin had an extremely flexible word order, and almost all grammatical information was given by the case and verb endings. English, though, has a very strict word order, and most grammatical information comes from where a word is in a sentence. ---
**Author:** ![Balthisar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/balthisar/32/2825_2.png) [@Balthisar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balthisar)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2005, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-you-supposed-to-split-your-infinitives/313357/39 "2005-07-22T13:58:36Z")
> [@Annie-Xmas](#): > > Yet Bible thumpers and lots of other (male) people will scream to their dying day that “man” includes “women.” And lots of non-bible thumpers and women, too. Thing of it like this: “man” and “man” are two different words. They’re homophones and spellingaphomes, but have two entirely different meanings. Kind of like, say, “ass” and “ass.” Someday, even, the dictionary will back me up on this and simply create two entries instead of one entry with multiple definitions. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2005, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-you-supposed-to-split-your-infinitives/313357/40 "2005-07-22T14:11:52Z")
> [@Jinx](#): > > How could the split infinitive rule have originated with Latin if, as you say, infinitives were one word, anyhow? That just doesn’t make any sense. It must have started with older English, and it stuck. Besides, didn’t Latin have a strange sentence structure where the meaning of a sentence was highly dependent on word order…as opposed to today’s English’s subject-predicate structure… > > - Jinx 😕 The infinitive of English is one word as well - the particle “to” often, but not always, precedes the infinitive. These grammarians, who had just as little comprehension of the language they were abusing as the modern variety, decided that “to see” ought to be treated as an indivisible unit, just as “videre” can’t possibly be split in Latin. It was by analogy to the Latin infinitive, not a rule leftover from Latin classes 2,000 years ago. And Latin sentence structure is much more flexible than that of English. Latin had all sorts of inflection to accomplish things that English does with word order. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-you-supposed-to-split-your-infinitives/313357.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-you-supposed-to-split-your-infinitives/313357.md?page=3)