To split, or not to split?

If we want to fully understand the evolution of the English language, we need look no further than the split infinitive.

For centuries, for reasons that are not entirely clear, it was considered a grammatical excrescence. It took the Sixties TV series Star Trek, with the mission “to boldly go where no man has gone before”, to reinstate it in popular culture.

Now, certainly in terms of spoken English, linguists have found the use of the split infinitive to be far more common than it was 30 years ago. But just because something is in greater demotic use does not mean it should be embraced.

The researchers also found that the word “like” is now infecting the sentences of our young people like a virus. Now, that really is something to be discouraged.