Sorry... (OT)

[Caius Marcius]

No: HPFGUIDX 6390

--- In HPforGrownups at egroups.com, "Flying Ford Anglia" 
<neilward at d...> wrote:
> Scott wrote:
> 
> 
> I think there was a split infinitive in there too, but I won't 
boldly 
> go there.
> 
> Winston Churchill famously put down a government official who 
> corrected his placement of prepositions at the end of sentences. He 
> commented, in red ink:
> 
> "This is the sort of pedantry up with which I will not put."
> 
George Bernard Shaw once wrote of a critic who attacked him for 
splitting infinitives, "If only he will leave, I do not care whether 
he chooses to leave quickly or to quickly leave."

Besides, the alleged ungrammatical nature of the so-called split 
infinitive is open to debate.  It derives from a mistaken application 
of Latin grammar (in which the infinitive is always a single word; 
e.g. accio = I summon, accire = to summon - but in Latin, all 
declensions of the verb are a single word, as opposed to English - I 
summon, she summons, they summon, we were going to summon, they have 
been summoning, etc) 

Bill Bryson, in The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way 
wrote "I can think of two very good reasons for not splitting an 
infinitive (1) Because you feel that the rules of English ought to 
conform to the grammatical precepts of a language that died a 
thousand years ago (2) Because you wish to cling to a pointless 
affectation of usage that is without support of any recognized 
authority of the last 200 years, even at the cost of composing 
sentences that are ambiguous, inelegant and patently contorted." 

  - CMC