On Nov 18, 2:42*pm, Mwmbwls wrote:
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standa...-drivers-rules...

Even allowing for the sensationalist "anything to sell(or rather give
away) papers" oversimplification approach of the Evening Standard,can
this/should this be done?

"Drivers will be told, under plans now being considered, not to follow
slavishly Transport for London guidelines that cause delays to
passengers" is a truly hideous sentence. Presumably theirs subs' desk
is not employing some old buffer with a bad grammar-school education
who believes that splitting an infinitive is such an egregious crime
that its prevention justifies anything, including ugliness and lack of
clarity. If you really, really are the last person alive who doesn't
realise that concerns about infinitive splitting are (a) a matter of
style rather than grammar and (b) mostly the product of silly
eighteenth century prescriptivists who believed English was just a
degenerate form of Latin in desperate need to restoration, then "not
slavishly to follow" is at least readable (although still ugly). But
what on earth led the sub to amend what was (almost certainly) the
journalist's original, and better, "not to slavishly follow" into the
dogs' dinner they published?

Pedants I don't mine. Pedants who mangle the language in pursuit of
pedantry that is of their own invention, they're a different thing.

ian