It might be best to never spilt infinitives; unless you, like Emily Dickinson or Dylan Thomas, breathe and live the craft of words, and then you would be wise to attentively do so.
Bach broke all the rules of counterpoint, but as a master of them. He was described once as a craftsman who would lovingly finish the part of a piece of furniture no one would see.
An actual master furniture maker who attained the level of a Japanese Living Treasure, George Nakashima, left the edges of his perfect, wood tables natural and unfinished.
It's fine, occasionally even stunning, to intentionally break rules, if with precision and mastery.
I'd like to return to Mr. Thomas, partly to illustrate the point of breaking rules, mostly because it gives me a chance to quote his wonderful words. Alex Quick writes of him in 102 Ways to Write a Novel,
Dylan Thomas opens Under Milk Wood by talking about the 'sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea', and I think it probably would have been unwise for anyone to have told him: 'Very nice Dylan, but too many adjectives.'
Interestingly, being a master does not mean you do not make mistakes. Nor does not making mistakes make you a master. Alex Quick placed quotation marks before a comma and also after a period in the above quote. It happens.
When I was in eight grade, I remember being told by Mrs. Connors, my English teacher, I couldn't start a sentence with "And," that I wasn't advanced enough to be allow to do so. But I knew I was. Yet I can't blame her, that was the impression I minted. . .
I was a lazy kid who gave the appearance of being, well, a lazy kid. When I actually sat down at our redwood picnic table one afternoon to write an assignment, a poem, she refused to believe it was mine.
Then one day we were given a boring research assignment. My friend talked about how he just copied his reports from the encyclopedia. "Brilliant," I thought! "I'll do the same." But I figured I would steal from our children's encyclopedia so it would sound like I wrote it.
I was called Mrs. Connors desk. "You took this from an encyclopedia," she said, "this part. And over here is your writing."
Only she had the parts mixed up. I should have dumbed down my own writing so she could have believed I was the author. And I would like to say that even at the time, we all recognized Mrs. Connors as a terrific teacher; really tough, but the best we had in junior high.
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