My grammar metarule is that grammar rules must be logical, consistent, and useful — where useful usually entails establishing or maintaining an important semantic distinction.

All other grammar rules can bite me.

In that bite-me spirit, I’ve dismissed the split-infinitive “rule” for decades. But it took Grammar Girl to help me see that not splitting infinitives (or should I say, “to not split an infinitive”) is sometimes to change the semantic content of a sentence:

The logic behind the 19^th century rule about not splitting infinitives rests on comparing English to Latin, because in Latin there is no two-word form of the infinitive. They don’t have to deal with full verbs versus bare verbs. Therefore, it’s impossible to split infinitives in Latin. For some reason, many grammarians in the 19^th century got the notion that because it is impossible to split infinitives in Latin, it shouldn’t be done in English either.

But notions change over time, and today almost everyone agrees that it is OK to split infinitives, especially when you would have to change the meaning of the sentence or go through writing gymnastics to avoid the split. English isn’t Latin after all.

So here’s an example of a sentence with a split infinitive:

EXAMPLE: Steve decided to quickly remove Amy’s cats.

In this case, the word quickly splits the infinitive to remove: to quickly remove.

If you try to just unsplit the verb, you actually change the meaning. For example, you might try to say:

EXAMPLE: Steve decided quickly to remove Amy’s cats.

Now, instead of saying that Steve removed Amy’s cats quickly (zip zip) while she stepped out for a minute, you’re saying that he made the decision to remove the cats quickly.