They say split infinitives are ugly, apparently. Were you saying Fowler would support the use of split infinitives, or just that it would make an appropriate blunt instrument with which to beat me? :)
Wikipedia has this (http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fowler's_Modern_English_Usage) reference to Fowler:
Fowler's remark on the split infinitive is well known:
"The English speaking world may be divided into those who neither know nor care what a split infinitive is, those who don't know, but care very much, those who know and approve, those who know and condemn, and those who know and distinguish."
Fowler concludes that split infinitives should not attract as much attention as they do, and says that they are indeed sometimes the best way to express one's meaning. See the split infinitive article for further discussion.
In general, Fowler is a voice(s) of reason amongst many proscriptive grammarian voices. Whereas they claim there is a single "correct English", he freely admits that language is a tool to be used or abused as seen fit by the author, and restricts himself to documenting usage as it stands rather than attempting to change usage by condemning forms he doesn't approve of.
In the case of your clause, the split infinitive is indeed a natural way of expressing the correct stress with the least fuss. But you may have to defend that position against Pointless Pedants.
Note that splitting with a negation is sometimes considered specially, but that the general fix for it, that of moving the negation outside to the next surrounding verb as I posted below, in this case subtly changes the meaning. With some verbs it works unambiguously, but in this case are there people who don't consider the subject to be keeping up, or is there no one who does consider the subject to be keeping up. One is a stronger statement about whether the subject is or is not keeping up!
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Date: 2003-10-10 01:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-10-10 02:14 pm (UTC)They say split infinitives are ugly, apparently. Were you saying Fowler would support the use of split infinitives, or just that it would make an appropriate blunt instrument with which to beat me? :)
(no subject)
Date: 2003-10-10 02:44 pm (UTC)In general, Fowler is a voice(s) of reason amongst many proscriptive grammarian voices. Whereas they claim there is a single "correct English", he freely admits that language is a tool to be used or abused as seen fit by the author, and restricts himself to documenting usage as it stands rather than attempting to change usage by condemning forms he doesn't approve of.
In the case of your clause, the split infinitive is indeed a natural way of expressing the correct stress with the least fuss. But you may have to defend that position against Pointless Pedants.
Note that splitting with a negation is sometimes considered specially, but that the general fix for it, that of moving the negation outside to the next surrounding verb as I posted below, in this case subtly changes the meaning. With some verbs it works unambiguously, but in this case are there people who don't consider the subject to be keeping up, or is there no one who does consider the subject to be keeping up. One is a stronger statement about whether the subject is or is not keeping up!