"to boldly go where no man has gone before.”

An English Lesson, by Raymond Chandler

Captain Kirk, the commander of the USS Enterprise, declared its purpose: “Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, "to boldly go where no man has gone before.”

The word boldly after the word to is called a split infinitive.

Star Trek’s ‘to boldly go’ is the most famous example of the split infinitive.

An infinitive is a combination of “to” and another verb. It’s a verbal phrase that can be used as a noun, adjective, or adverb.

Examples of infinitives in sentences include:

• played his guitar to entertain (used as an adverb to modify played)

• a great day to go (used as an adjective to modify day)

• want to talk to you. (used as a noun)

A split infinitive occurs when you place a modifier (usually an adverb) between “to” and the verb. It looks like this:

• Juan played his guitar to expertly entertain the audience.

• Today is a great day to finally go to the beach.

• I only want to quickly talk to you.

The Rules: Traditionally, grammar students were always taught not to split their infinitives. The rule dates back as early as the Victorian Era.

Strict grammarians also dislike split infinitives because they interrupt the unit of thought – the infinitive – with a modifier. It separates “to” from its verb, which can make the sentence confusing.

(source)…Modern Day Writers and Editors say splitting your infinitives doesn’t matter like it did in older times. In fact they have become common today. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Ok great, so what? I didn’t sign up for Grade 10 English.

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Raymond Chandler

Raymond Thornton Chandler (July 23, 1888 – March 26, 1959) was an American-British novelist and screenwriter. In 1932, at the age of forty-four, Chandler became a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Great Depression.

He became the quintessential crime writer, master of the noir genre, and is remembered as a chronicler of the grimy underside of rapidly expanding metropolises like LA in the 1940s and 1950s. His first novel, The Big Sleep, was published in 1939. He went on to publish seven novels during his lifetime, and many short stories that appeared in pulp magazines of the time.

Chandler had an immense stylistic influence on American popular literature. He is a founder of the hard-boiled school of detective fiction, along with Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, and other Black Mask writers. The protagonist of his novels, Philip Marlowe, like Hammett's Sam Spade, is considered by some to be synonymous with "private detective". Both were played in films by Humphrey Bogart, whom many consider being the quintessential Marlowe. (…source)

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The following is from the book “Letters of Note“ by Shaun Usher, who you should subscribe to on Substack as well!

January 18, 1947

In January 1947, renowned novelist Raymond Chandler wrote a letter to the editor of The Atlantic Monthly, Edward Weeks, primarily about the title of a piece he had written for the magazine which was ultimately published the next year, titled, “Oscar Night in Hollywood”. It is the latter half of this letter, however, – a wonderfully lyrical message to be passed on by Weeks to the publication’s proofreader – that has since become one of Chandler’s most famous quotes. Indeed, Weeks did pass on the message, to a copyeditor named Margaret Mutch. She then wrote a letter to Chandler, to which Chandler responded with the delightful poem also shown below.

Here is that letter:

Dear Mr. Weeks:

I’m afraid you’ve thrown me for a loss. I thought “Juju Worship in Hollywood” was a perfectly good title. I don’t see why it has to be linked up with crime and mystery. But you’re the Boss. When I wrote about writers this did not occur to you. I’ve thought of various titles such as Bank Night in Hollywood, Sutter’s Last Stand, The Golden Peepshow, All it Needs is Elephants, The Hot Shop Handicap, Where Vaudeville Went it Died, and rot like that. But nothing that smacks you in the kisser. By the way, would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in a sort of broken-down patois which is something like the way a Swiss waiter talks, and that when I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split, and when I interrupt the velvety smoothness of my more or less literate syntax with a few sudden words of barroom vernacular, this is done with the eyes wide open and the mind relaxed but attentive. The method may not be perfect, but it is all I have. I think your proofreader is kindly attempting to steady me on my feet, but much as I appreciate the solicitude, I am able to steer a fairly clear course, provided I get both sidewalks and the street between.

If I think of anything, I’ll wire you.

Kindest Regards, (Signed)

Chandler’s poetic response to Mutch’s letter:

Lines to a Lady With an Unsplit Infinitive

“Miss Margaret Mutch she raised her crutch
With a wild Bostonian cry.

“Though you went to Yale, your grammar is frail,”
She snarled as she jabbed his eye.

“Though you went to Princeton I never winced on
Such a horrible relative clause!

Though you went to Harvard no decent larva
Accept your syntactical flaws.

Taught not to drool at a Public School
(With a capital P and S)

You are drooling still with your shall and will
You’re a very disgusting mess!”

She jabbed his eye with a savage cry.
She laughed at his anguished shrieks.

O’er the Common he fled with a hole in his head.
To heal it took Weeks and Weeks.

“O dear Miss Mutch, don’t raise your crutch
To splinter my new glass eye!

There ain’t no school that can teach a fool
The whom of the me and the I.

There ain’t no grammar that equals a hammer
To nail down a cut-rate wit.

And the verb ‘to be’ as employed by me
Is often and lightly split.

A lot of my style (so-called) is vile
For I learned to write in a bar.

The marriage of thought to words was wrought
With many a strong sidecar.

A lot of my stuff is extremely rough,
For I had no maiden aunts.

O dear Miss Mutch, leave go your clutch
On Noah Webster’s pants!

The grammarian will, when the poet lies still,
Instruct him in how to sing.

The rules are clean: they are right, I ween,
But where do they make the thing?

In the waxy gloam of a Funeral Home
Where the gray morticians bow?

Is it written best on a palimpsest,
Or carved on a whaleboat’s prow?

Is it neatly joined with needlepoint
To the chair that was Grandma’s pride?

Or smeared in blood on the shattered wood
Where the angry rebel died?

O dear Miss Mutch, put down your crutch,
and leave us to crack a bottle.

A guy like I weren’t meant to die
On the grave of Aristotle.

O leave us dance on the dead romance
Of the small but clear footnote.

The infinitive with my fresh-honed shiv
I will split from heel to throat.

Roll on, roll on, thou semicolon,
ye commas crisp and brown.

The apostrophe will stretch like toffee
When we nail the full stop down.

Oh, hand in hand with the ampersand
We’ll tread a measure brisk.

We’ll stroll all night by the delicate light
Of a well placed asterisk.

As gay as a lark in the fragrant dark
We’ll hoist and down the tipple.

With laughter light we’ll greet the plight
Of a hanging participle!”

She stared him down with an icy frown.
His accidence she shivered.

His face was white with sudden fright,
And his syntax lily-livered.

“O dear Miss Mutch, leave down your crutch!”
He cried in thoughtless terror.

Short shrift she gave. Above his grave:
HERE LIES A PRINTER’S ERROR”.
(…source)

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Thanks to Shaun Usher.

Shaun’s Website

Thanks to the Subscribers. Peace in Ukraine!