Grammar Workshop: Splitting Verbs in the Presidential Oath of Office

by Jennie Ruby 

I just love it when a grammar issue occurs in a highly visible public way. I am referring, of course, to the goof-up of the presidential oath of office last Tuesday.

 

• "I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States."

 

Chief Justice John Roberts moved the adverb faithfully to the end of the clause: "that I will execute the office of President of the United States faithfully." President Obama ended up stating it that way as well.

 

Steven Pinker of the New York Times supposes that Roberts did that because he believed in the outdated and incorrect "rule" that you cannot split an infinitive, and, by extension, you cannot split any verb in English by placing an adverb between the parts of the verb. Whether he believed in that rule or not, the fact is that the Constitution split the verb, and the oath had to be re-administered later in the day to make sure it counted legally.

 

The facts: you can split an infinitive. You can split any verb. Don't even worry about it. It is time for this rule to finally die. I myself have been keeping this outdated rule alive by teaching that you should avoid splitting the infinitive if you can, because some of your readers might believe in this outdated rule. After the fiasco with the presidential oath, I am changing my tune. Now I say: Split the infinitive. Split any verb you like. That is how the English language works: we have infinitives that can be split, so that we can split them. We have multiple-word verbs so that we have the flexibility to insert adverbs between them to subtly or greatly change the meaning.

 

The irony of the oath of office incident is that there is actually another split verb even before the faithfully part:  I do solemnly swear. And another one later on: will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend.

 

Here are some examples of verbs that are either infinitives (to verb) or verbs preceded by one or more helping verbs. All of them can have adverbs placed between the parts of the verb:

 

• to boldly go
  
  
• has totally bungled
  
  
• will greatly alter
  
  
• might seriously affect

Now, it is also perfectly correct to place the adverb at the end of the sentence. Roberts did not make a grammatical error by moving the adverb-just a legal one. An adverb placed at the end of a sentence actually gets more emphasis, so you might choose to do this on purpose: 

• This error will greatly alter our plans.
  
  
• This error will alter our plans greatly.

 

So from now on: split those verbs! Place the adverb right in the middle! Or move your adverb to the end of the sentence-but only if you feel like it, and not because of some outdated rule.

 

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About the Author: Jennie Ruby is a veteran IconLogic trainer and author with titles such as "Essentials of Access 2000" and "Editing with MS Word 2003 and Adobe Acrobat 7" to her credit. Jennie specializes in electronic editing. At the American Psychological Association, she was manager of electronic publishing and manager of technical editing and journal production. Jennie has an M.A. from George Washington University and is a Certified Technical Trainer (Chauncey Group). She is a publishing professional with 20 years of experience in writing, editing and desktop publishing.

Comments

[Jessica]

Oh, my goodness. I hate when rules become obliterated simply because no one likes to do them. I can see some points in splitting helping verbs from their verbs with an adverb, but there is no room for a split infinitive. You will be marked wrong in every high education English paper. "Will greatly alter" could be acceptable, because 'alter' doesn't need a helping verb to survive a sentence in other usages: "They alter" makes sense. But "they marking" does NOT make sense; you must say "they were marking" or "are marking", and thus you cannot say "they were quickly marking;" you must say "they were marking quickly." End of story.