Brendan O'Leary's A Treatise on Northern Ireland, Volume I starts with a quotation from Spinoza's Tractatus Politicus: Sedulo curavi, humanas actiones non ridere, non lugere, neque detestari, sed intelligere. I have labored carefully, not to ridicule, or detest, but to understand. That's Brendan's translation, which captures the relevant essence, although it leaves out the second […]
As long ago as 1914, an article by the grammarian George O. Curme made the point that more than can modify the verb of an infinitival complement, and since it must be adjacent to the verb, that actually forces a split infinitive: shifting the more than modifier to anywhere else creates clear ambiguity. I found […]
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I have grumbled on several previous occasions about the Economist's stubborn adherence to a brainless policy that its editors maintain: no adjuncts are to be located between the to and the verb in an infinitival clause, lest readers should get annoyed. That is, the magazine's style guide insists that the "split infinitive" construction should be […]
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The Economist has demonstrated several times that it would rather publish ambiguous, awkward, or even ungrammatical sentences than permit a verb-modifying adjunct to intervene between the marker to and the head verb of the infinitival clause it introduces (see here and here for two of my discussions of the topic). Last week I obtained a […]
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I have commented elsewhere on the fact that writers in The Economist are required to write unnatural or even ungrammatical sentences rather than risk the wrath of the semi-educated public by "splitting an infinitive" (putting a preverbal modifier immediately before the verb in a to-infinitival complement clause). The magazine published a sentence containing the phrase […]
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In the spirit of Geoff Pullum's lyrical prescriptive poppycock offering, I can offer some Raymond Chandler in verse and letter. And this being Language Log, I will follow it with a light dessert of cheap science. Here's a small sample of Chandler's 1947 poem Lines to a Lady With an Unsplit Infinitive for your edification: There […]
A couple of weeks ago, John McIntyre took a critical look at Word Rage ("Walsh should be shot!") — from the prescriptivist point of view ("With friends like this", 4/14/2008). John is not only the Baltimore Sun's assistant managing editor for the copy desk, but also a past president of the American Copy Editors Society, […]
Photograph of a sign on a curry shop in Banqiao District, New Taipei City:
Sometime LLOG contributor John McWhorter is the featured guest on Episode 4 of Bill Gates' podcast Unconfuse Me. The trailer:
From Laura Morland: Plane plunge A United Airlines 777 leaving Hawaii made a scary plunge toward the ocean shortly after takeoff, flight tracking data shows. The incident occurred in December when the plane dived toward the ocean for 21 seconds a little over a minute after takeoff. Neither United nor the FAA indicated anyone was injured on […]
Illustrating Ben Tarnoff's 11/11/2022 NY Review of Books article "In the Hothouse", Paul Klee's 1922 painting Die Zwitscher-Maschine ("The Twittering Machine"):
The prohibition against placing an adverb between "to" and a following verb was once one of the most widespread Zombie Rules in English — here's Wikipedia on the history of the "Split infinitive" controversy. As Geoff Pullum wrote in 2018, the zombies have recently been losing: "At last, a split infinitive in The Economist"; "Infinitives […]
As native speakers of English, we have a direct, non-analytical understanding of the differences among "look", "see", and "watch", the three main verbs for expressing visual perception. The first indicates that we have a purposive gaze at / toward / for something; the second that our sight focuses on what we were looking for; and […]