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From: amigo@iwpba.UUCP (amigo)
Newsgroups: net.flame,net.nlang
Subject: Re: Inappropriate Articles
Message-ID: <159@iwpba.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 18-May-84 09:55:08 EDT
Article-I.D.: iwpba.159
Posted: Fri May 18 09:55:08 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 19-May-84 00:09:51 EDT
References: tesla.356 <278@wxlvax.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, Il
Lines: 31

Richard L. Wexelblat points out:

>>	Let's get concerned about things that matter!  Like split
>>	infinitives!  Fully 3-5% of the articles submitted (unencrypted)
>>	to news contain split infinitives.  (The encrypted ones
>>	probably do but I'm afraid to ask my system guru how to
>>	decode them.  He's already mad at me.)
>>
>>	Let's get together to try to greatly improve the level of
>>	discourse on these networks!

But net.flame is where we go to boldly split infinitives where no
man has split them before.  Anyway, W. H. Fowler himself says that
it it all right to occasionally split an infinitive. [:-)]

Seriously, the reason that splitting infinitives is not kulturny in
English is that the old grammarians who tried to make English
grammar match Latin grammar found that while it is possible to
split infinitives in English--since the English infinitive is two
words--it is not possible to split an infinitive in Latin, where
the infinitive is just one word ("to love" in English becomes
"amare" in Latin).  Since their sense of propriety was offended,
they declared that split infinitives in English was bad grammar.

This is the same reason that ending a sentence with a preposition
was forbidden.  A sentence with a preposition at the end does not
make sense in Latin, therefore it is decreed to be bad English.

			John Hobson
			AT&T Bell Labs--Naperville, IL
			ihnp4!iwpba!amigo