ShmoopTube

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Are split infinitives okay?, a la Shmoop. You're on a road trip to Phoenix, and end

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up spending the night at the Bates Motel.

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When Norman busts in with his knife, do you opt to bravely fight back with your towel

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whip... ...your shaving cream...

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...or your ability to cunningly split every infinitive in sight?

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Let's start with what an infinitive is. There are two kinds. Bare infinitives are the one-word

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verbs you use every day...

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...like “shower”, “shave”, and “kill”.

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Full infinitives carry a “to” in front of the verb, so you end up with “to shower”,

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“to shave”, and “to kill”.

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Splitting an infinitive, then, is what happens when you add a word between “to” and the

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bare verb attached to it. Grammarians of the nineteenth century would

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have destroyed anyone they caught splitting infinitives.

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However, those guys are now ghosts... ...and pretty much everyone today agrees that

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splitting infinitives is kosher. Let's look at a couple of examples. You could

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say, “Norman worked to carefully conceal Marion's body”...

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...meaning Norman hid the girl's corpse where no one was ever going to find it.

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But what if you didn't split the infinitive in this example?

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What if you said instead, “Norman worked carefully to conceal Marion's body”?

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The sentence would have a completely different meaning. “Carefully” would be referring

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to how Norman worked...

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...rather than to how he concealed. Okay, another example. You could say, “Norman

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decided to artfully dress as his dead mother.”

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If you don't split the infinitive...

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...and say instead that “Norman decided artfully to dress as his dead mother”...

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...the result is a sentence that doesn't make sense.

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There may come a day when you doubt the correctness of splitting infinitives. If so, just remember

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this...

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...the catch phrase for “Star Trek” is “to boldly go where no man has gone before.”

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If Gene Roddenberry was allowed to split infinitives, then you get a pass, too.

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