Reader Don in Los Angeles County wrote recently with a question about a well-known grammar issue called a “split infinitive.” “I learned about them 50 years ago and I am somewhat sensitive about them ...

When you look up a verb in the dictionary what you find is the verb in the infinitive form. In English it’s two words - ‘to swim’ - but in German it’s just the one schwimmen. In German, there’s a ...

An "infinitive" in English is a verb preceded by the word to, as in to study. Many English verbs can be followed by a grammatical structure that contains an infinitive and is known as an "infinitive ...

Today we're gonna talk about split infinitives. First of all, what is an infinitive? It's a form of the verb that has to in front of it. And it doesn't indicate anything about tense or about person or ...

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW was once so angry with a subeditor that he complained to the newspaper. “I ask you, sir,” Shaw wrote, “to put this man out.” The cause of his fury? The editor had insisted on ...

We can all probably recite at least part of Star Trek's iconic mission statement, as dictated by William Shatner in the series' opening credits. Every week, fans were told that the Enterprise's ...

You’ve probably heard the old story about the pedant who dared to tinker with Winston Churchill’s writing because the great man had ended a sentence with a preposition. Churchill’s scribbled response: ...

If you think that you’re a stickler for grammar, consider the position of the British regarding the 1871 Treaty of Washington. According to a literary historian, the British government refused to sign ...