Split infinitives are one of those pesky grammatical ideas that many people have heard of and have a vague idea will cause a loss of marks in an essay or dissertation, yet aren’t really able to define or avoid. In fact, to define ‘split infinitive’ is much easier than you might think, and the idea that they are grammatically ‘wrong’ is a myth, though you may still want to edit them out to be on the safe side when essay editing or proofreading, particularly in coursework or marked essays.

What is a split infinitive?

The infinitive form of the verb is its ‘root’ form, beginning with ‘to’. For example, ‘to eat’, or ‘to sleep’. A split infinitive is quite simply a description of a sentence where instead of appearing next to one another, the ‘to’ and the other part of the verb are separated by another word, almost always an adverb.

eg. “You’re going to really love it”

What’s wrong with split infinitives

You may have heard that split infinitives are bad grammar, or think of them as errors when you are editing essays. In fact this is not technically true – it comes from the idea that our language derives from Latin, which has only a single word to express the infinitive forms of its verbs (eg. amare – to love). Therefore some traditionalists feel that the infinitive should be all together in English too.

Should I remove split infinitives when editing?

If you are editing a GCSE essay or an undergraduate dissertation, it may be best to avoid split infinitives just to be on the safe side, as many examiners and traditionalists frown upon them and there is a risk the piece could lose marks. They are usually fairly easy to circumvent with a little syntactical manipulation:

eg. Split infinitive sentence: “The man went to carefully pick up the baby.”

Non-split infinitive sentence: “The man carefully went to pick up the baby.”

Split infinitives – a final note

There may be occasions when the rhythm or impact of a sentence is actually disrupted by the removal of a split infinitive – consider for example the famous quote:

“To boldly go where no man has gone before”

So remember, a split infinite isn’t a sin and may even be the most effective syntactical choice, but steer clear just in case in examined and coursework essays.