When Captain Kirk or Captain Picard says the mission of the Enterprise is “to boldly go” where no one has gone before, is it just me, or does everyone else stop for just a second and say, “Split infinitive!”?
Not to get too complicated, “to go” is an infinitive, a verb phrase common in many languages. In English, it’s the verb, the action word, if you will, and a form of the verb to be. And in English, one of the “rules” is that you don’t split the infinitive, you treat it as a single unit.
So “to boldly go” is a split infinitive. But what are the alternatives?
The late pundit and language maven James Kilpatrick once used the Star Trek mantra as an example of why the rules sometimes need to be ignored. (Or if you prefer, why the rules need to be sometimes ignored.) Because language is more than just a collection of words and rules about how to line them up to make sense. There’s a rhythm, a music to a well-written sentence.
And to say, “To seek out new life and new civilizations, boldly to go where no one has gone before …” just doesn’t have the swing. “To go boldly” is better, but it still doesn’t the same zest, the same dynamic rhythm, the (dare I say?) poetry, that the line carries when it “breaks the rules.”
Anyway, that’s all I have to say about it. Not anything profound. Just a reminder to myself to not become fixated on form, and to remember, as the old jazz man used to sing, “It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.”
Doo wah doo wah doo wah doo wa doooo.
BaurLife 