The Ear Knows

(Economist image)

One inviolate rule of grammar has been the prohibition of split infinitives. The Economist's new style guide proclaims a new rule: [bold added]

to boldly go where grammarians have feared to tread....Infinitives may be split.

The old rule hasn't been around that long, however. The earliest written reference is attributed to writer John Comly, who declared in 1803:

An adverb should not be placed between a verb of the infinitive mood and the preposition ‘to’ which governs it.

Once every three or four months your humble blogger is compelled to rephrase a split infinitive because, well, it's against the rule. But the fix often butchers the meaning, not to mention the rhythm of the phrase:

But the lazy remedy, merely to move a modifier one word left or right, is worse. Constantly to do this results in an odd, jarring rhythm. (Robert Burns wrote “to nobly stem tyrannic pride” because it has a pleasingly punchy beat to it.) And the “move it left or right” manoeuvre often means that the modifier ends up modifying the wrong thing, or creating an ambiguity.

(Rephrasing Star Trek's "to boldly go" as the discordant "boldly to go" or almost-the-same-but-not-quite "to go boldly" illustrates the problem.)

The ear knows.