infinitives whenever possible, but do not suffer undue remorse if a split infinitive is unavoidable for the completion of a sentence already begun." Still more strongly, older editions of The Economist Style Guide said, "Happy the man who has never been told that it is wrong to split an infinitive: the ban is pointless. Unfortunately, to see it broken is so annoying to so many people that you should observe it" (but added "To never split an infinitive is quite easy."). This recommendation, however, is weakened in the 12th edition. After stating that the ban is pointless, The Economist Style Guide now says "To see a split infinitive nevertheless annoys some readers, so try to avoid placing a modifier between "to" and the verb in an infinitive. But if moving the modifier would ruin the rhythm, change the meaning or even just put the emphasis in the wrong place, splitting the infinitive is the best option." As well as varying according to register, tolerance of split infinitives varies according to type. While most authorities accept split infinitives in general, it is not hard to construct an example that any native speaker would reject. Wycliff's Middle English compound split would, if transferred to modern English, be regarded by most people as un-English: It was most unkind to in this manner treat their brother. Attempts to define the boundaries of normality are controversial. In 1996, the usage panel of The American Heritage Book was evenly divided for and against such sentences as, I expect him to completely and utterly fail but more than three-quarters of the panel rejected We are seeking a plan to gradually, systematically, and economically relieve the burden. Here the problem appears to be the breaking up of the verbal phrase to be seeking a plan to relieve: a segment of the head verbal phrase is so far removed from the remainder that the listener or reader must expend greater effort to understand the sentence. By contrast, 87 percent of the panel deemed acceptable the multi-word adverbial in We expect our output to more than double in a year not surprisingly perhaps, because here there is no other place to put the words more than without substantially recasting the sentence. A special case is the splitting of an infinitive by the negation in sentences like I soon learned to not provoke her. I want to not see you any