Newsletter of the East Bay Chapter of STC
September/October 2004| Home

Ask Elaine: Infinit(iv)e Possibilities

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When language geeks start throwing around grammar jargon, like infinitive or inflection, most normal people have very strong reactions. Their eyes start to glaze over, they begin muttering under their breath about having a plane to catch, and they start looking surreptitiously for the nearest exit. I can’t really blame them. For every person I’ve met who loved English class, there seem to be at least five who either barely tolerated it or downright hated it, and one of the main reasons seems to be the confusing terms.

However, anyone who writes for a living can benefit from brushing up on some of the common terms used to describe certain elements of the English language. After all, it’s a lot easier to put together the pieces that constitute a clear, solid piece of writing when you know what those pieces are and how they best fit together.

The Infinitive

Let’s take the infinitive, for example. Infinitive is really just a fancy name for the uninflected (stripped-down) version of a verb; i.e., the form that can have the word to before it. Thus to be is the infinitive, and its various inflections (the forms that go with the pronouns I, he, she, you, we, or they) include am, is, and are.

Infinitive form	Inflected form
to be	I am, he/she is, you/we/they are
to write	I/you/we/they write, he/she writes
to employ	I/you/we/they employ, he/she employs

In most cases, one or more of the inflected forms are exactly the same as the infinitive. So, for most verbs (be is an exception), just remember that the infinitive is the same as the form used with I, you, we, and they. Or, you can think of the infinitive as the form of the verb that sounds right when you stick the word to before it.

Why does this matter? Because there are times when the infinitive is the only correct choice.

Necessity Sentences

One situation where it is important that a writer employ the infinitive is in sentences expressing strong necessity. The previous sentence is an example; notice the infinitive verb employ is used rather than the inflected form employs. Any time you have a sentence that starts out “It is necessary that…” “They insist that…” “We urge that…” you can be sure that the verb coming after the that should be an infinitive.

The Split Infinitive

When another word intrudes between the word to and the infinitive, it’s called a split infinitive. An example is the famous phrase from Star Trek, To boldly go where no man has gone before, where the word boldly appears between to and go, thus “splitting” the infinitive. As James Thurber notes in Ladies’ and Gentlemen’s Guide to Modern English Usage, “Word has somehow got around that a split infinitive is always wrong.” If you learned this “rule” in English class, you can feel free to utterly ignore it and to freely split infinitives as you see fit. Let’s face it—to go boldly just doesn’t have the same panache.

* From The Owl in the Attic and Other Perplexities, Grosset & Dunlap, 1931.

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