After submitting for consideration a short story for FWA Collection 7, Revisions: Stories of Starting Over, I noticed I had split an infinitive like an atom. Although the result may not be as devastating, it may prevent publication. On second thought…
The Star Trek introduction, “To boldly go where no man has gone,” influenced the way I spoke during formative years in rural North Carolina. Grammar school grammar lessons were forgotten as soon as I rushed home, to veg out on episodes of The Flintstones. Fred and Barney split infinitives, as they did rocks at the quarry.
All the words used by television characters are arranged by writers, and affect the way we speak. Because it sounds right doesn’t make it so.
Moreover, age alters accurate memory of rules concerning infinitives. A Google search reveals that the Get It Write website offers comprehensive ways to avoid this grammar goof.
The only example governing infinitives from the ’60s that I recall is the opening “Nunnery Scene” of Shakespeare’s Hamlet: To be, or not to be, that is the question.
While Prince Hamlet contemplated the unfairness of life, splitting an infinitive is not as dire as his choice: life versus suicide.
But how to avoid split infinitives? Well, that is another question. And I came across a simple solution: temporarily hyphenate the infinitive, linking it to the verb.
Using the Star Trek introduction as an example, link “to” and “go” with a hyphen, when writing a draft manuscript. To-go boldly… Writing to-boldly-go requires two hyphens, and alerts writers to the oopsy-daisy.
A grammar check won’t caution writers about either the hyphenated infinitive or the poor sentence structure, so it’s necessary to remove the helper hyphens when submitting a work for consideration.
Had I hyphenated an infinitive in my anthology submission, I could have avoided the “not to be published” predicament.
Another helpful hint to avoid splitting infinitives, the way Solomon proposed dividing an infant, comes from bestselling Mary Burton. In an article for The Florida Writer, Burton advised not to use “ly” words. In this un-split infinitive example, “To go where no man has gone” eliminates the “ly” word and split infinitive.
No reasonable person ever said writing is easy. A good writer is like an architect, who oversees all components of a major construction project. Write on!
