always be split, they should be split where doing so improves the sentence: "The natural position for a modifier is before the word it modifies. Thus the natural position for an adverb modifying an infinitive should be just … after the to" (italics added). Bernstein continues: "Curme's contention that the split infinitive is often an improvement … cannot be disputed." Heffernan and Lincoln, in their modern English composition textbook, agree with the above authors. Some sentences, they write, "are weakened by … cumbersome splitting," but in other sentences "an infinitive may be split by a one-word modifier that would be awkward in any other position." Principal objections to the split infinitive Objections to the split infinitive fall into three categories, of which only the first is accorded any credence by linguists. The descriptivist objection One of the earliest arguments against the split infinitive, expressed by an anonymous contributor to the New-England Magazine in 1834, was based on the impression that it was not an observable feature of English as used by "good authors." Henry Alford, in his Plea for the Queen's English in 1864 went further, stating that use of the "split infinitive" was "a practice entirely unknown to English speakers and writers." In principle there is a consensus that language teachers should advise on usage on the basis of what is observed to be current practice in the language. If the early critics of the construction did not observe it to be usual in (the prestige variety of) English as they knew it, their advice was legitimate. However it would be difficult to argue that way today, as the split infinitive has become very common. The argument from the full infinitive A second argument is summed up by Alford's statement "It seems to me that we ever regard the to of the infinitive as inseparable from its verb." The to in the infinitive construction, which is found throughout the Germanic languages, is originally a preposition before the dative of a verbal noun, but in the modern languages it is widely regarded as a particle that serves as a marker of the infinitive. In German and Dutch, this marker (zu and te respectively) sometimes precedes the infinitive, but is not regarded as part of it. In English, on the other hand, it is traditional to speak of the "bare infinitive" without to and the "full infinitive" with it, and to