Well, not really

Yesterday's post contained a list of words that do NOT follow this famous rule:

I before E except after C
Or when sounding like A as in "neighbor" and "weigh".

Looking back I see some words that should be on the list, but aren't, like beige and heifer; I also note the list lacks spontaneity. (Make your own punchline; I tried, but couldn't.) The list also doesn't include different forms of other words that are on the list (i.e. "deify" is there, but not "deified", etc.). I was stunned to find that "leity" wasn't on the list, until I realized it is spelled "laity".

On the whole, though, the rule is right about 70% of the time. Some other blogger did the math and came up with a higher number than that, but he also excluded words in which the "i" and "e" belonged to different syllables. And he still didn't get "beige". If I can find that page again, I'll link to it. Until then, "I before e", and so on.

Are the exceptions swallowing the rule?

Can you figure out what the following words have in common? It shouldn't be too hard, but I'm not going to tell you today.

albeit
ageing
atheism
being
caffeine
counterfeit
deify
either
foreign
forfeit
height
kaleidoscope
leisure
neither
protein
reimburse
reinforce
reinstate
seeing
seize
sovereign
surfeit
weird

Stay tuned.

To hell with "to helm"

Few segments of the American population as are culpable in the ongoing assault on American English as the writers in the entertainment industry. They are trying to create as many synonyms as possible for a short list of nouns and verbs that, really, don't need more synonyms. Consider "to helm", which is now a synomym for "to direct". Horrible.

"Grindhouse will be presented as one full-length feature comprised of two individual films helmed separately by each director." -- "Mr. Disgusting", www.bloody-disgusting.com

"[Ken Olin] Executive produced and helmed the ABC family drama, 'Brothers & Sisters'." -- Unknown, tv.yahoo.com

"The tuner will be helmed by two-time Tony Award-winning director/choreographer Kathleen Marshall (The Pajama Game)." -- Staff, Broadway.com (Omigod, this quote uses both "helmed" and "tuner". Run for the hills!)

Another usage that makes me wretch is using "to bow" as a substitute for "to premiere" or "to release". It's one thing to use "bow" as an intransitive verb in this sense.

"'Ocean's 13' to bow at Cannes Film Festival"
At least that's almost as inoffensive as simply saying "to debut". But please, PLEASE, someone save me from the horrible use of "to bow" as a transitive verb.

"VeriSign to bow online movie service" -- headline, fierceiptv.com

Bow should NEVER be a transitive verb meaning "debut". NEVER EVER. You can bow your head but not your movie.

So just for the record to all you horrible entertainment writers out there: if you have ever committed any of these crimes against language, no one is ever going to read your screenplay.

Split, split, split that infinitive!

Take a careful look at the following sentence and see what's wrong with it.

"To boldly go where no man has gone before."

It's not a sentence? Well, um, okay. What else?

Did you say "nothing"?

Congratulations. I agree with you.

A generation or so ago, back when they taught grammar in schools, one of the quickest ways to get a red mark on your English homework was to split an infinitive. An infinitive, in English, is the form of a verb when preceded by the preposition "to", i.e. "to go". It was commonly, though often incorrectly, thought to be wrong to split infinitives, ever. That absolute prohibition, never completely well grounded, has vanished nearly to the point of extinction nowadays. This probably has less to do with today's high school students casting a more tolerant eye towards infinitives than the fact that they probably have no idea what an infinitive is, of course, but if you are reading this blog instead of downloading Justin Timberlake videos, you probably do have an idea. But as they say, a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. (Though not as dangerous as no knowledge, but I digress.)

Almost every English verb has an infinitive form beginning with "to", but some do not. My seventh grade English teacher, Ms. Sowder, was reminded of this the year before I began junior high when she offered an "A" for the six weeks to the students in one of her classes "to anyone who could think of a verb that did not have an infinitive form beginning in 'to'". One of my lifelong friends, and a bigger smart aleck than me, thought for a while, and responded "To could?" Several helping verbs later, he and some of his classmates no longer had to worry about homework for a while.

One theory about how the rule against split infinitives began is that Latin infinitives are only one word. Thus, the Latin word for "to love" is "amare". Since there's no splitting "amare", it follows that one cannot split "to love". Unfortunately, Romans were even worse about obscure grammar rules that English teachers; there are six, count them, six infinitives for each regular Latin verb. I suspect the real reason Rome burned was not that Nero was playing his violin but was practicing conjugation for his dissertation defense. In any event, it's not clear that Latin usage is a sufficiently strong reason not to split infinitives in a different language.

(I should note that the Latin origin theory of the rule against split infinitives is only one of several.)

If there is no good reason not to split infinitives, why does the prohibition persist today? the short answer is that there are good reasons. Even though it's not always bad to split infinitives, it frequently is. The reader's mind tends to think of an infinitive as one word, and if it's possible to keep the two parts together, it should be done. If not, you may sound as awkward as this famous wordsmith:

They want to not just get you off the air but also — to savor the full enjoyment — bring you to your knees financially.

This is a compound infinitive, because the italicized "to" belongs to both "get" and "bring"; the latter appears a full fifteen words later in the sentence -- and after a second "to", to boot. The composer of this horrible prose is none other than Dick Cavett, who is featured in the New York Times Select online edition as ... an expert on grammar. There are various ways "to not just get" could be edited to read more smoothly; the solution to the second split is much easier.

Not only do they want to get you off the air, but also -- to savor the full enjoyment -- to bring you to your knees financially.

(Don't get me started about "but also"; that has to be another post.)

So, it appears, though there is no absolute prohibition against split infinitives (never mind what your college English teacher taught you), it's a good idea to avoid them when it obscures the idea you were trying to convey.

But what if the "correct" infinitive sounds wrong? For example: "Boldly to go where no man has gone before", or "To go boldly where no man has gone before". The infinitives are standing at attention, dutifully appearing in unitary unsplit form, but their sentences sound awkward to us, and it's not just because we've heard the "incorrect" version so many times. Adverbs normally do not belong at the beginning of a sentence (or, in this case, a phrase masquerading as a sentence). "To go boldly" is a little less jarring, and I suspect if Mr. Shatner had uttered the phrase in that incarnation, we'd all be the same. But there is something about the rhythm created by splitting the infinitive.

To bold-ly go where no one has gone be-fore.

The line is so close to iambic pentameter it's virtually Shakespearean. That, and the recurring emphasised "o"s, make a little thing like a split infinitive seem silly.

This just in: Kurt Vonnegut was a writer. He died. So it goes.

Restart THIS

My litigation schedule is heavier than I like right now, so I still haven't published my post on split infinitives, but rather than finishing that, I've decided to vent some steam about one of the stupider ideas from our favorite mediocre American icon, MicroSoft.

My opinion of MicroSoft is colored by my perception that it has prospered not by building a better mousetrap, but by building a barely-good-enough mousetrap and doing a better job of marketing it. Ask any lawyer whether he'd rather run an office based on MicroSoft Word (any version) or WordPerfect 4.2. MicroSoft seems to me to be an endless tinkerer, but comes to market before its tinkering is complete.

Luckily, most of its post-release tinkering is now available in free updates, although one is still expected to purchase new boxes on occasion to fix problems with the old software. Why this isn't akin to having to buy tires for your new car, because the manufacturer forgot to install them in the first place, beats me.

At least you don't have to spend money to get these new updates. The little shield-shaped icon alerts you that the updates are there, and then you can keep working while MicroSoft is updating your computer.

But once the updates are ready to be installed, you have to restart the computer. And the shield gives you two choices: restart the computer now, or later. Almost always, I choose "later". What the shield doesn't tell me is "Okay, but I'm going to interrupt you every five minutes until you restart the computer, because you're so stupid you'll probably forget that you need to install me." And, of course, if it did tell you that, then you could reply "No, I'm not, you inanimate presumptous piece of code, it's just that I have more important things to do right now than restart my computer, like get this $*@&%! brief out before 5:00, so shut up already."

So why is it that MicroSoft won't give us a third choice: "Restart when I damned well feel like it"? Beats the hell outta me.