Captain Kirk’s “Infinitive”
Eugene Volokh takes the Language Police to task for their “prescriptivist” objection to splitting “infinitives” (i.e.,verb constructions consisting of to + verb). One of the best known examples of a split “infinitive” is Captain Kirk’s famous statement “to boldly go,” hence the title for this entry. Eugene writes:
I split the infinitive without thinking about it, precisely because normal, educated English speakers and writers split the infinitive without thinking about it.
January 30th, 2004 at 9:00 pm
SPLITTING INFINITIVES
Xrlq’s excellent post on an error-laden Ass. Press story got me thinking about split infinitives. I noticed that the AP story in question split an infinitive, and I thought that it was about the only thing in the story that…