Language tips

Q:  I was taught that placing an adverb in the middle of an infinitive phrase was ungrammatical. Correctly one puts the modifier before a noun (red dress) but after a verb phrase (to scream loudly). Thus the tag line from Star Trek: "To boldly go where no man has gone before" is incorrect. The correct phrase would be "to go boldly." Am I wrong?

A:  Attorney Patricia Brown Holmes, who sent this question is right in pointing out that it is correct to put the adverb boldly after the infinitive phrase to go ("to go boldly"). But it would also be correct to insert the adverb boldly into the middle of the phrase ("to boldly go").

Attorney Holmes’ question concerns that old bogey, "the split infinitive." I’ve probably talked about it before, in response to other readers’ questions, but it may be time to discuss it again.

The idea that it is ungrammatical to "split" an infinitive came into being during the 18th century, when grammarians believed that English was an imperfect version of Latin, from which it was derived, and should resemble Latin as much as possible. If you know Latin, you know that in Latin infinitives one word suffices instead of the two that English requires. For example, amare means "to love," capere means "to catch." (The legal term certiorari means "to make certain.") Therefore, said the grammarians, no words should be placed between to and the verb in English infinitives.

But even in the 18th century, that "rule" was ignored by many good writers. The grammarian Ernest Burchfield spends several pages in his 1996 grammar, The New Fowler’s Modern English, discussing the history of the split infinitive and its present state. As a conservative, he tends to avoid separating the infinitive phrase, but he agrees that to insist on following the edict of the 18th century grammarians would sometimes create ambiguous and awkward constructions.

He uses some illustrations to make his point. For example, he acknowledges that "to forbid flatly the hostilities" is awkward and says that "to flatly forbid the hostilities" is clearer. Another illustration, "to really watch yourself," is preferable to "really to watch yourself." After a long discussion of the split infinitive, he closes with the comment, "Avoid splitting infinitives whenever possible, but do not suffer undue remorse if a split infinitive is unavoidable for the natural and unambiguous completion of a sentence already begun."

Not only do people fail to suffer "undue remorse" when they split infinitives; most people, in this 21st century, are completely unaware that they are doing so. Phrases like "to slowly approach," "to quietly leave," "to suddenly jump" are common. Even several words are often inserted between to and the verb: for example, "to gradually and carefully remove the bandage" from a wound. Split infinitives are acceptable and widely used in modern English.

Q:  Please give me your opinion about a nagging grammatical error that seems to be becoming more prevalent: the misuse of the apostrophe in plurals.

A: Mr. Richard Radbil writes that he is not an attorney, but he reads the Bar News, which his son, an Illinois attorney, sends him. He cited as examples the annoying use of an apostrophe in plurals like "TV’s, CD’s, Auto loan’s, and Home listing’s." He also listed "The Oakland A’s" as an example.

Mr. Radbil is rightly annoyed at the flagrant misuse of the apostrophe in plurals where it is not needed. (It is needed, of course, in the possessive form of the examples he provided. "The TV’s stand was broken," and "Home Listings’ catalog" would both be correct.) The rule is that for plurals, merely add an s, both in words and in abbreviations. But in cases where misunderstanding might occur without an apostrophe, add one. That exception probably explains the apostrophe in "The Oakland A’s," which, without the apostrophe, might be read as "The Oakland As."

Mr. Radbil was even more annoyed when he saw the apostrophe‑error in the October 21st issue of The New York Times, considered the most literate of American newspapers. It occurred in the plural abbreviation "E.T.F’s," short for "Exchange Traded Funds." In that abbreviation the writer made two errors, using periods between the letters of the abbreviation and the apostrophe before the s. Mr. Radbil theorized that the author "so badly wished to misuse the apostrophe that he created a seldom‑used abbreviation to justify his misuse."

FROM THE MAILBAG:

A reader sent the following sentence to illustrate the importance of the "lowly comma." It came from a newspaper editorial and stated, "An ordinance on the changes must be written and approved by the Commission." No comma, so the sentence states that the Commission must both write and approve the ordinance. But the fact was that the ordinance had to be written by the Commission’s staff, and then approved by the Commission. To make that meaning clear, there should have been a comma in the sentence after "written": "An ordinance on the changes must be written, and approved by the Commission."

My thanks to that alert reader. Too bad the editorial writer wasn’t as alert.

Gertrude Block is Lecturer Emerita at the University of Florida College of Law. Her book ,”Legal Writing Advice: Questions and Answers” (William S. Hein & Co., Inc.) was published in December 2004. Ms. Block is also author of “Effective Legal Writing”, 5th Edition (Foundation Press), with an accompanying instructor’s manual. She is co-author of the “Judicial Opinion Writing Manual” (published by the American Bar Association, 1991).  Send questions to the ISBA Bar News – Language Tips, Illinois State Bar Association, Illinois Bar Center, Springfield, IL 62701, or  mailto:block@law.ufl.edu.