There’s a special kind of British pride in obeying rules.
We love queues, we love manners, we love saying sorry when someone stands on our foot…
…and we simply live for correcting other people’s grammar-and usually with more zeal than accuracy.
But here’s a truth that might startle the red-pen brigade: many of the ‘rules’ we were taught at school were simply made up.
Made up.
Not by Shakespeare.
Not by Chaucer, and certainly not by anyone who spoke English as a living language.
They were invented by eighteenth and nineteenth-century scholars who wanted English to behave like Latin.
Lest, of course, the great unwashed got ahead of themselves and wanted to be able to read and write.
It’s true. Many of our modern grammar rules were created in an attempt to keep aspects of the language inaccessible to all but those who’d been fortunate enough to have an education rather than been forced up a chimney at the age of nine.
Take one of the most famous of all: ‘Never split an infinitive’.
Now, I’d safely bet a not inconsiderable amount of money on suggesting that even some of you, my most beloved and valued blog readers, might have heard of that particular phrase-but, far from knowing what an infinitive is and why it mustn’t be split else hewn in anyway, don’t even know what the ‘rule’ means in the first place.
‘Infinitive’, isn’t that where Buzz Lightyear was headed?
Job done. When people couldn’t even work out what the rule meant, let alone how it was applied to everyday use, they were more than likely to shrug their weary shoulders and decide that, after all, they’d rather spend eighteen hours a day (sixteen on a Saturday) picking up flints from Lord Snide’s fields than learn how to read and write.
So, a quick explanation.
In the simplest terms, never split an infinitive means don’t put a word (usually an adverb, that is a word that modifies another word, for example, words that explain how, when, where, how often, or to what extent something happens) between ‘to’ and the verb (a ‘doing’ word-so, for example, run, like, jump etc) that follows it.
Hence ‘to go quickly’ follows this Victorian rule of linguistic law. But ‘to quickly go’ doesn’t.
Which is why, in Star Trek, the opening monologue of Captain Kirk states ‘to boldly go’ is, again, if you are a stickler for the rules, incorrect. He should be saying ‘to go boldly.
But here’s the thing, at least when it comes to this extremely well-worn example of splitting an infinitive-technically speaking, ‘to go boldly’ follows the traditional rule that you shouldn’t split an infinitive (that is, again, and pay attention at the back, you shouldn’t put a word between ‘to’ and the verb). In this case, the infinitive is ‘to go’, and ‘boldly’ splits it.
However, and this is why Star Trek’s phrasing is so famous, ‘to boldly go’ sounds better.
It has rhythm, emphasis, and a kind of thrust that fits perfectly with the show’s spirit of adventure.
So, in short (and you won’t have failed to notice that my ‘quick explanation’ still runs to 204 words), this is exactly what the Victorian lexicon pedants intended, to make the ‘rules’ of the language so incomprehensible that only academics would understand them)
Grammatically conservative form: to go boldly
Stylistically powerful and widely accepted form: to boldly go
Even most modern grammarians now agree, amidst much harrumphing and letters to The Times (which can’t resist having, even today, a weekly feature dedicated to the likes of ‘ Aghast (nay, apoplectic) of Henley-on-Thames’ whinging about the misplacement of a preposition in a relative clause) that splitting infinitives is fine when it improves the flow or meaning of a sentence — as it most certainly does here.
in short: ‘To boldly go’ does indeed break a rule-but it does so beautifully.
So who do we have, ultimately, to thank for this linguistic snobbery?
Step forward Bishop Robert Lowth, an eighteenth-century cleric whose grammar book became the Bible for generations of teachers. He and his peers weren’t bad people in that they carelessly tossed their servants out into the winters night on a whim, but they still, for me, erred as, in wanting to give the English language dignity and structure, their prescription for doing so reflecting personal taste and social class more than linguistic fact.
But this was the eighteenth century of course and their prejudiced rules spread through the education system like gospel, meaning, before long, children were being corrected not for being unclear, but for sounding ‘common’.
And the ghosts of those grammarians still hover over us today.
Writers panic about split infinitives, editors rewrite sentences into awkward shapes, and social media fills with people correcting others’ posts in the name of ‘proper English’.
But language isn’t a moral code, it’s a living organism. It changes, mutates, and disobeys-look, for example, at ‘text’s speak, just about everyone knows that ‘thx’ means ‘thanks’; ‘fyi’ translates as ‘for your information’ and ‘pls’ is ‘please’.
Bishop Lowth’s jowly features would redden in horror as he self-immolated (ROFL?) in disgust. Honestly, these plebians today…
But thank goodness the language is evolving, else we’d all still be speaking like monks.
Now, before anyone fires off a strongly worded email: I’m not saying rules don’t matter.
They do-but only when they help readers understand you.
Grammar should serve clarity, not class. The best writers know the rules so they can choose when breaking them makes the prose sing rather than stumble.
Here’s my rule of thumb: read your sentence aloud. If it sounds natural, it probably is. If you’re twisting syntax into a pretzel to appease an imaginary Victorian schoolmaster…
…loosen up.
Writing is communication, not ceremony.
And if you ever doubt that, let me tell you a story. When I was twelve, my English teacher returned an essay of mine covered in red ink.
I’d dared to start a sentence with ‘But’. She wrote across the margin: ‘You may not begin a sentence this way, Edward — it isn’t proper English’.
I remember staring at that note, baffled. The sentence read better, regardless of what she had written, with the ‘But’.
Even then, I knew it sounded right. I didn’t yet have the confidence to argue with her-but I wish I had.
Because the truth, as I learned years later, is that English belongs to those who use it well, not those who try to fence it in.
So yes, learn the rules. But learn where they came from-and who made them up.
Then write with freedom, precision and flair.
Because the best English isn’t the most obedient.
It’s the most alive.
