It is one thing to adopt the grammatical labels (e.g. “noun,” “verb”) to categorize words in English sentences; it is quite another thing to go on to claim that the structure of English sentences should be like the structure of sentences in Latin. That was an approach taken by a number of influential grammarians, mainly in eighteenth-century England, who set out rules for the “proper” use of English. This view of grammar as a set of rules for the “proper” use of a language is still to be found today and may be best characterized as the prescriptive approach. Some familiar examples of prescriptive rules for English sentences are:

Following these types of rules, traditional teachers would correct sentences like Who did you go with? to With whom did you go? (making sure that the preposition with was not at the end of the sentence). And Mary runs faster than me would be corrected to Mary runs faster than I. And Me and my family would certainly have to be corrected to My family and I, as Ann Landers would recommend. And, in proper English writing, one should never begin a sentence with and!

It may, in fact, be a valuable part of one’s education to be made aware of this “linguistic etiquette” for the proper use of the language. If it is a social expectation that someone who writes well should obey these prescriptive rules, then social judgments such as “poorly educated” may be made about someone who does not follow these rules. However, it is worth considering the origins of some of these rules and asking whether they are appropriately applied to the English language. Let’s take one example: “You must not split an infinitive.”

The infinitive in English has the form to + the base form of the verb, as in to go, and can be used with an adverb such as boldly. It would be very appropriate in Latin grammar to say you cannot split an infinitive. But is it appropriate to carry this idea over into English where the infinitive form does not consist of a single word, but of two words, to and go? If it is a typical feature of the use of English that speakers and writers regularly produce forms such as to boldly go, to solemnly swear or to never ever say goodbye, then we may simply wish to note that there are structures in English that differ from those found in Latin, rather than think of the English forms as “bad” because they are breaking a rule of Latin grammar.