#WritersCoffeeClub 4/10 What's something other writers swear by that you just don't get?
Never splitting infinitives in English. The rule came from Latin, where an infinitive is a single word. English infinitives are TWO words, and Latin lost all its prestige centuries ago!
@dancingtreefrog
also I'm not convinced that the "to" is actually part of a Latin-style infinitive; it seems to behave more like an English preposition; as tho every verb that can sensibly take another verb as an object actually has a related phrasal verb: like to, want to, able to.
(cuz all learners of English agree, what the language needs is more phrasal verbs!)
well, then you got constructions like "can run", "can sit"; where the second verb is clearly not finite in extent. some folks declare these "modal" verbs, to go next to helping verbs, imagining they're part of English's tense system. but you still got a class of verbs that take "to" infinitives and a class that takes base infinitves.
Latin grammatical structures aren't a great guide to English grammar, is what I'm getting at
David W. Jones
EWR KSC