“to boldly go”

I just saw a web ad that said “5 food to never eat,” and it reminded me of the usual mockery of the opening words of Star Trek: “To boldly go…” as a split infinitive.

Personally, I’d like to see the ban on split infinitives discredited. In fact, I don’t think it’s even still in place. H.W. Fowler’s classic work on English usage was already making fun of people who avoid splitting infinitives under all circumstances, and I think I remember the OED taking a similar if less sarcastic stand at some point in the past.

Bottom line: I think split infinitives usually lead to more vigorous language; the need to avoid them usually results in stilted, artificial word order that you end up not able to use anyway just because it sounds so bad.

“5 foods to never eat” sounds a lot better than “5 foods never to eat,” and I don’t see any logical grounds for insisting that “to” needs to touch the verb directly other than the fact that “to” is part of the infinitive in English. But so what? No one is going to get confused about that when there’s just one word in between.