>>I'd love to ask Patrick Stewart, a shakespearean actor, if it hurt him to have to say that, splitting the infinitive. I can just hear his dulcet tones: "I say, why don't we try something different with this new show: 'Boldly to go ...'?"
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>>>To boldly go where no man has gone before.....
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>According to the stuff I've read over the last couple of years as I've started teaching writing, the whole thing about split infinitives is not a hard and fast rule. It's one of those things that got put into grammar books by people who felt the need to have such rules. Ditto for ending a sentence with a preposition. The great writers broke both these "rules" all the time.
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>Tamar

Sure, even writers from centuries ago. Churchill, on the subject of prep's at EOS reportedly said something like, "That is English up with which I cannot put", presumably tongue-in-cheek.

which shows you what ridiculous lenths to which some people will go (to what ridiculous lengths ... ?)

There was a film a few years ago, with Joe Pesci as a bum knocking round a college campus (probably living off the old alli can collection thing). He snook into one of the lectures and answered a Q from the pompous professor, with a prep. at the end, something like, say, "Government like that we don't have to put up with".

The professor said, "Here at Harvard we don't end a sentence with a preposition", to which JP answered:

"Alright, government like that we don't have to put up with ... Asshole." Loved it! :-)