I blogged a link yesterday to a site of "Non-Errors" in English -- discussion of some language rules that the site argues are not really valid rules of language today.
The link is making the rounds of popular blog sites, which is how I picked up on it. I sent it to Stephanie, who is my definitive source for all grammar and editing, (being a well-educated editor for a publishing company and connoisseur of the English language) for her thoughts. Here's what she had to say:
I think he's a little hard on split infinitives; for some reason I don't have a problem with them unless they aren't clear. I think there's more to the between/among distinction than he says. The IDG style guide mentions that it matters whether a one-to-one relationship is meant. Our style guides have always specified the over/more than and since/because distinctions, and although I'm certainly not as strict as some, I'm not as permissive as he is. I'm not convinced that "regime" and "regimen" are synonyms -- I've never heard of a "dietary regime." Titled vs. entitled -- in terms of a book, entitled means "given a title," and that, to me, happens once. I don't have the OED, so I can't see what sense Chaucer used it in.
I have actually heard people saying that infinitives weren't split in Latin, therefore they shouldn't be split in English. The fact that infinitives were a single word in Latin, and therefore not splittable anyway, doesn't seem to make any difference.
I'm with Stephanie on this one: "I don't have a problem with them unless they aren't clear."