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Subject:Split Infinitive Now Respectable From:"Gottlieb, Lynn" <Lynn -dot- Gottlieb -at- PSS -dot- BOEING -dot- COM> Date:Mon, 26 Oct 1998 15:49:26 -0800
No folks, this is not a joke...
> October 26, 1998
>
> Split Infinitive Now Respectable
>
> Filed at 11:19 a.m. EST
>
> By The Associated Press
>
> OLD SAYBROOK, Conn. (AP) -- It's time to officially abandon the rule
> against the split infinitive.
>
> Oxford dictionaries, makers of the self-proclaimed ``last word on words,''
> has ended its centuries-old ban on splitting infinitives.
>
> Some language purists are unhappy with the change. They say the infinitive
> -- a verb with ``to'' in front of it -- always should remain joined.
> For example, the infinitive ``to jump'' should be modified as ``to jump
> quickly,'' they say, and never ``to quickly jump.''
>
> ``I do think it's a great sadness that the Oxford dictionary is doing
> this,'' said Loftus Jestin, head of the English department at Central
> Connecticut State University. ``Hearing split infinitives is like
> listening to Mozart when the pianist keeps hitting all the wrong notes.''
>
> ``I do not dine with those who split infinitives,'' said Samuel Pickering,
> a University of Connecticut English professor who is considered to be
> the inspiration for the lead role in ``The Dead Poets Society.''
>
> The change is included in the new Oxford American Desk Dictionary, which
> came out last month. The dictionary says the prohibition on split
> infinitives can lead to ``awkward, stilted sentences.''
>
> Frank Abate, editor in chief of Oxford's U.S. dictionaries program in Old
> Saybrook, says the rule is arbitrary. The rule has its basis in Latin,
> and as Abate points out, we don't speak Latin.
>
> ``There's essentially no validity to it,'' Abate said.
>
> Random House, Strunk and White and others already have given their
> approval to split infinitives.
>
> But this is Oxford after all, publisher of the venerable unabridged Oxford
> English Dictionary -- the hallowed 20-volume, 138-pound,
> 21,730-page O.E.D. It is considered by many the authority on the King's
> English.
>
> Oxford University Press first lifted the moratorium in its British edition
> last year.
>
> Cindy Butos, assistant director of the writing center at Trinity College
> in Hartford, is thrilled with the change.
>
> ``I think it's terrific,'' she said. She said it frees people from an
> unnecessary rule that doesn't contribute to the English language.
