Sure, I do too...in Latin

| 2 comments

This girl sitting next to me in class today has come back to library school after getting her PhD in English. I think it's a sad state of affairs when roughly nine years of schooling does not prepare to actually give back to society. However, that is not the point here. The point is that she and her ilk are the source of everything wrong with prescriptivists today. During the lecture, she leaned over to me and said, "I hate split infinitives." We were reading a strategic plan (yes, I do hate library school) that said something like "to successfully meet the needs of the community". As all actually educated (as opposed to degreed) people know, there is no real reason to not split infinitives in English. Thankfully, the stupid rule is appears to gradually be dying. My only wish would be for it to completely disappear. I want to not hear it any more. Sadly, if college professors continue to incorrectly teach this rule, their students will think they need to assiduously avoid it. And since this woman stands credentialed to teach English on a university level, she will force her students to blindly follow a obsolete rule.

All is lost. We are all going to painfully die. Or at least, our English will suffer.

2 comments:

Katya said...

Whoa. I didn't understand any of that. Probably it's because you were using split infinitives, and that's not real English.

Petra said...

Look, maybe when she was little a split infinitive attempted to viciously attack her father at a circus. Do try not to summarily judge without probing the real reasons.

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