A WORD, PLEASE:

A few weeks ago, I wrote in this space: “The key to avoiding the frightening-sounding problem known as the ‘dangling participle’ is to not be frightened.”

Soon after, I got this e-mail from a reader named Barbara: “June, as a former English teacher, I noticed your split infinitive in your first paragraph. I’m sure it was just a simple error, but it is one that irritates me. I hope you don’t mind.”

Barbara was referring to the phrase “to not be,” which places “not” right between the “to” and the “be” — a unit many refer to as an infinitive. The most famous example of the split infinitive is the “Star Trek” opening line, “to boldly go.”

Long before “Star Trek,” and especially in the 1950s, people were cautioning against the split infinitive. It was, perhaps, the most famous grammar no-no of all time. And its fame lives on. There’s just one problem. It’s not true.

A lot of people don’t believe me when I say there’s no rule against splitting infinitives — as well they shouldn’t. I don’t have the authority to make that call. That’s why I go straight to the sources — lots of them. And the most respected authorities in the English language are unanimous:

“No absolute taboo should be placed on the use of simple adverbs between the particle ‘to’ and the verbal part of the infinitive,” writes “Fowler’s Modern English Usage.”

The idea that you should never split an infinitive is “superstition,” says “Garner’s Modern English Usage.”

“Adverbs sometimes justifiably separate the ‘to’ from the principal verb: ‘they expect to more than double their income next year,’” says the “Chicago Manual of Style.”

“There is nothing wrong with splitting an infinitive, except that eighteenth- and nineteenth-century grammarians, for one reason or another, frowned on it,” writes Theodore M. Bernstein in “The Careful Writer.”

“Infinitives: Split away!” writes Bill Walsh, copy desk chief of the Washington Post’s Business Desk.

“I consider it my calling to dispel the myth that it’s against the rules to split infinitives,” writes Mignon Fogarty in “Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing.”

And these are just the conservative experts. Linguists argue that it’s impossible to split an infinitive because “to” isn’t part of the infinitive. It just introduces it.

So, if there’s no such rule or even no such thing as a split infinitive, why do so many people say it’s wrong?

Sometimes, words between the “to” and the infinitive can make a sentence less clear, as we see in this example cited in “Garner’s”:

“ … Raymond Floyd revamped the course, adding, among other things, 18 bunkers to, he says, ‘put the teeth back in the monster.’” That “he says” after the “to” is awkward indeed. So it’s easy to imagine how wise caveats against splits could have been overstated.

But the “American Heritage Dictionary” traces the myth to its roots:

“The only rationale for condemning the construction is based on a false analogy with Latin. The thinking is that because the Latin infinitive is a single word, the equivalent English construction should be treated as if it were a single unit. But English is not Latin.”

That’s why the so-called split infinitive is nothing to fear.

?JUNE CASAGRANDE is author of “Mortal Syntax: 101 Language Choices That Will Get You Clobbered by the Grammar Snobs — Even If You’re Right.” She can be reached at JuneTCN@aol.com.