I before E except after C

That Louis Louis was a bit of an animal.

OP – watch out for Boeing as well.

Non compos mentis, that's me. First a wrong number, then a wrong name.

'Never split infinitives. Plenty of occasions when this rule can be broken' (libbyh)

zashibis is right. However, in 1998, the Oxford English Dictionary abandoned its support of the so-called rule of not splitting infinitives. As the BBC reported at the time:

"Oxford University Press says the rule of not splitting infinitives is based on a fallacy. They blame its accepted use on the failure of traditionalists to understand English grammar. The rule itself is based on Latin, where verbs consist of only one word. The infinitive, therefore is never split. The (1998 edition of the O.E.D.) dictionary explains: "the dislike of split infinitives eg 'to boldly go where no man has gone before' is long-standing but not well founded, being based on an analogy with Latin".

Another two rules:

1. A final 'e' makes the vowel before the previous letter sound like its name. For example, 'take', 'line', 'stile', 'mule'. [the letter 'e' does not fit into this rule)

2. A double consonant makes the previous vowel short. For example, 'talc', 'link', 'still', 'mull'.

Yes, there are many exceptions to these rules, but they are still useful. As I once read somewhere, "Every language has its rules, all of which are meant to be broken".

It may be worth noting that no split infinitives appear in the Standard Version of the Bible (King James) and that only one appears in Shakespeare. If there had been no feeling that to wantonly split infinitives was undesirable, we would expect there to definitely be more.

It may also be interesting to here note that in German you can't say things like "zu nicht gehen", something like an English split infinitive. In such constructions, the adverb has to always come before the zu.

So the 19th century rule may have some basis other than analogy to Latin. And when in doubt, it may be better to not split an infinitive in English.

it may be better to not split an infinitive... LOL

Years ago I came across a reference to an alleged argument in a Newspaper, where one correspondant wrote:
"I care not whether he chooses, quickly to go, to go quickly, or to quickly go: so long as he goes, and that quickly."

Edited by: CrazyEddie

A final 'e' makes the vowel before the previous letter sound like its name.

What a complicated way of saying it makes the vowel long! I re-read it several times before I figured out what it meant. Especially since rule 2 mentions "short vowels".

I wonder if the anti-split-infinitive brigade would object to constructions such as 'to more than double' - would they prefer 'more than to double'?

A final 'e' makes the vowel before the previous letter sound like its name.

A bit of searching tells me that that is a common way of explaining what a long vowel means. Sometimes its used to avoid having ot talk about long & short vowels.
>So, what sounds am I talking about when I say "long vowel"? Well, when we teach kids how to read, we tell them that a long vowel sound says its name, a, e, i, o, or u. So, the long a sound sounds like (long a), as in the word cake c-a-k-e.

And the FOAK says "A mnemonic was that each vowel's long sound was its name."

One might think that references to "long" and "short" vowels would not cause an editor to bat an eye, but this one spent his professional lifetime dealing with the English language and always had to stop and think a moment when those terms came up. I liked the way a "long vowel" was described at #23.