Date: Sat, 30 Jan 1999 04:07:10 +0000 From: Mark Ovens <marko@uk.radan.com> To: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> Cc: "Daniel C. Sobral" <dcs@newsguy.com>, Sheldon Hearn <axl@iafrica.com>, Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@critter.freebsd.dk>, Mikhail Teterin <mi@kot.ne.mediaone.net>, FreeBSD Chat <chat@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: English style (was: btokup().. patch to STYLE(9) (fwd)) Message-ID: <36B2856E.FE4B1383@uk.radan.com> References: <90073.917600532@axl.noc.iafrica.com> <36B1CABD.BCC90EC7@newsguy.com> <19990130101911.V8473@freebie.lemis.com> <36B27388.E1E1D99A@uk.radan.com> <19990130133214.J8473@freebie.lemis.com>
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Greg Lehey wrote:
>
> On Saturday, 30 January 1999 at 2:50:48 +0000, Mark Ovens wrote:
> >
> >
> > Greg Lehey wrote:
> >>
> >> [moved to chat]
> >>
> >> On Friday, 29 January 1999 at 23:50:37 +0900, Daniel C. Sobral wrote:
> >>> Sheldon Hearn wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> I didn't have a problem reading the sentence, even though you left out
> >>>> required commas. The only thing that caused a problem was your use of
> >>>> split infinitive. ;-)
> >>>
> >>> Split infinitive is a urban legend. It has *never* been outlawed in
> >>> the english language, except for some crazy people in this century
> >>> and, I think, later last century.
> >>
> >
> > Not according to the OED. It is only in the most recent edition that the
> > split infinitive is officially recognized as grammatically correct.
> >
> > The classic example is Star Trek; "To boldly go.....", until now it
> > should have been "Boldly to go...", or "To go boldly....".
> >
> > Still, what the hell. We all speak American nowadays anyway ;-)
>
> >From an authority that the Americans are more likely to accept, I
> quote the Chicago Manual of Style, 14th Edition, section 2.98
> (footnote):
>
"...that the Americans are more likely to accept..."?. I thought we were
talking about English?. The official definition of the English language
is the OED, so to quote an obviously American journal on a point of
English grammar is inappropriate. American-English and
Australian-English are both derivatives of English (I object to the term
"British-English"). If Americans have considered the split infinitive
grammatically correct for many years then that is up to them, but in
_English_ it has only recently become accepted as grammatically correct.
> The thirteenth edition of this manual included split infinitives
> among the examples of ``errors and infelicities'' but tempered the
> inclusion by adding, in parentheses, that they are ``debatable
> `error' ''. The term has been dropped from the fourteenth edition
> because the Press now regards the intelligent and discriminating use
> of the construction as a legitimate form of expression and nothing
> writers or editors need feel uneasy about. Indeed, it seems to us
> that in many cases clarity ad naturalness of expression are best
> served by a judicious splitting of infinitives.
>
> Greg
> --
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--
Trust the computer industry to shorten Year 2000 to Y2K. It
was this thinking that caused the problem in the first place.
My homepage http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~markov
Mark Ovens, CNC Apps Engineer, | mailto:marko@uk.radan.com
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