word order - Are split infinitives grammatically incorrect, or are they valid constructs?



Mark's generosity in this crisis seems to more than make up for his earlier stinginess.



Should those sentences always be avoided, or are there cases where they are valid?



Answer



The only thing that should be avoided is awkwardness. Putting adverbial phrases between the infinitive complementizer to and the infinitive can sometimes be awkward, but it is certainly never ungrammatical or “invalid”. Even the most conservative and staunchest prescriptivist commenters admit that there is nothing inherently ungrammatical about so-called “split” infinitives, which have been attested in all forms of written English for at least seven hundred years.


Indeed, in many cases, putting the adverbial phrase in the intervening position is the only grammatical place to put it, such as in the example in the original poster’s question. There are a couple posts on Language Log discussing these “obligatorily split infinitives”: (“Obligatorily split infinitive”), (“Obligatorily split infinitive in real life”).


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