Here's an example I used in class in support of split infinitives:
Attempts to unsplit the infinite (to quietly enter) in the following sentence don't seem to succeed:
Consider the possibilities:
- The queen told the page quietly
to enter the chamber where the king was sleeping.
Misleading at best. The likely interpetation will be that the queen was speaking quietly.
- The queen told the page to enter quietly
the chamber where the king was sleeping.
Pretty awkward. Adverbs do not usually go between verbs and their objects. Who ever says, "I entered quietly the chamber"?
- The queen told the page to enter the chamber quietly
where the king was sleeping.
Solved a phony problem and created a real one. Now we've split a relative adverb ("where") from the noun it modifies ("the chamber").
- The queen told the page to enter the chamber where the king was sleeping
quietly.
Not even ambiguous. This will be interpreted to mean the king wasn't snoring for a change.
Dick Veit
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