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Finers Stephens Innocent and Howard Kennedy agree terms for £45m merger

Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe the origin of the split infinitive rule in English is that fact that you can't do it in Latin - Latin infinitives are one word so are unsplittable. English grammarians wanted to make the language more like a classical one. The verb 'to be able to', however, takes an additional verb in the infinitive in Latin (e.g. possum + infinitive), so the "can" and the non-finite verb are 2 separate words. Granted, maybe in Latin these are always placed together (I don't know), but this is not the point of the split infinitive rule - the point is that Latin infinitives are one word. There does not appear to be any reason why "can + verb" cannot be split in English. Now go back to avidly reading the Economist.

10-Aug-2012

10:04 am