A Quote by Richard Lederer

It is indeed acceptable practice to sometimes split an infinitive. If infinitive-splitting makes available just the shade of meaning you desire or if avoiding the separation creates a confusing ambiguity or patent artificiality, you are entitled to happily go ahead and split!

Richard Lederer

Quote Topics

Acceptable Ambiguity Artificiality Available Avoiding Confusing Creates Desire Entitled Go Happily Indeed Infinitive Just Makes Meaning Patent Practice Separation Shade Sometimes Split Splitting

Quote Author

Richard Lederer
American - Author
Born: May 26, 1938

English grammar is so complex and confusing for the one very simple reason that its rules and terminology are based on Latin - a language with which it has precious little in common. In Latin, to take one example, it is not possible to split an infinitive. So in English, the early authorities decided, it should not be possible to split an infinitive either. But there is no reason why we shouldn't, any more than we should forsake instant coffee and air travel because they weren't available to the Romans.

Bill Bryson

When I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it stays split.

Raymond Chandler

There is no reason why we shouldn't be able to split an infinitive, any more than we should forsake instant coffee and air travel because they weren't available to the Romans.

Bill Bryson

There is nothing finer in the world than the telling of tales. Split atoms if you wish, but splitting an infinitive-and getting away with it-is far nobler. Lance boils if you wish, but pricking pretensions is often cleaner and always more fun.

Greg Bear

Would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in a sort of broken-down patois which is something like the way a Swiss waiter talks, and that when I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split, and when I interrupt the velvety smoothness of my more or less literate syntax with a few sudden words of bar-room vernacular, that is done with the eyes wide open and the mind relaxed but attentive.

Raymond Chandler

Each time I see a split infinitive, an inconsistent tense structure or the unnecessary use of the passive voice, I blister.

Sonia Sotomayor

Forcing modern speakers of English to not - whoops, not to split an infinitive because it isn't done in Latin makes about as much sense as forcing modern residents of England to wear laurels and togas.

Steven Pinker

Remember to never split an infinitive. The passive voice should never be used. Do not put statements in the negative form. Proofread carefully to see if you words out. And don't start a sentence with a conjugation.

William Safire

Spirituality is indeed the master-key of the Indian mind; the sense of the infinitive is native to it.

Sri Aurobindo

Spirituality is indeed the master key of the Indian mind; the sense of the infinitive is native to it.

Sri Aurobindo

There's a split in the US about how this [split] will be resolved. The main point to look at is the split within the Republican Party. The Republican establishment, and Wall Street, and the bankers, and the corporate executives and so on, they don't want this. They don't want it at all. It's the part of the base that is mobilized that wants it.

Noam Chomsky

A split personality can never become non-greedy. It can try, but it can never become. A split personality can never go beyond anger. It can try, but it can never go beyond. A split personality can never go beyond sex. It can fight. So many monks in the monasteries are doing it. They don't go beyond sex; at the most their sexuality becomes perverted, their love becomes poisoned.

Rajneesh

Then Jesus changed the situation. When he paid for our sins on the cross, the veil in the temple that symbolized our separation from God was split from top to bottom, indicating that direct access to God was once again available.

Rick Warren

To boldly split infinitives that no man had split before.

Douglas Adams

My parents were kids when I was born. My mother was 16. My father was 17, and they got married in high school. And they split a few years later. When they split was when all that was happening also, and he - they were just coming into themselves. But they remained friends.