Word of the Day

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Infinitives and badly structured sentences

Some people get extraordinarily angry about this sort of thing [a split infinitive]. If you're not of those people, the infinitive is the form of the verb that uses "to", as in "to reproduce".

Two things here: infinitives don't have to have a to. In the sentence she cannot swim, swim is also an infinitive, a bare one.
The other thing: If you're not of those people... one thinks if you are not one of those people who get extraordinarily angry, as that is the topic of the previous clause, but then the author goes on with something completely unrelated.