[ExI] Gender-Neutral Side Note

[John Clark]

On Sun, Nov 9, 2025 at 11:03 AM spike jones via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

*> Better would have been “…to go boldly where no earth-evolved human has
> gone before…” They fixed the split infinitive by switching to “to go
> boldly” replacing “to boldly go” tossing us grammar nazis a bone. *


*Yeah the grammar police say you should never split an infinitive, they
also say that although many sentences in the King James Bible start with
the word you should never start a sentence with "and", they say the same
thing about "but". But I think that's a stupid rule. And I know for a
fact that being a grammar nazi can lead to embarrassment, it happened to
Chief Justice Roberts.*

*When Barack Obama was inaugurated in 2009, Chief Justice Roberts misstated
the presidential oath. The oath that is written in the Constitution is "I
do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of
president of the United States..." but Roberts said, "repeat after me, I
will execute the office of president of the United States faithfully," He
placed the adverb "faithfully" after the verb phrase "execute the office of
president" instead of before it, apparently wanting to avoid a split verb
or split infinitive.** Obama repeated the oath as Roberts said it, although
he very clearly looked surprised. Later that same day in a private
ceremony, Roberts and Obama had to repeat the oath with the correct words
in a private ceremony.*

*John K Clark*



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