<div dir="auto"><div><br><br><div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sun, Nov 9, 2025, 12:25 PM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><u></u>
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<div>On 09/11/2025 16:01,
<a href="mailto:spike@rainier66.com" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">spike@rainier66.com</a> wrote:<br>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">From:</span></b><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">
extropy-chat
<a href="mailto:extropy-chat-bounces@lists.extropy.org" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer"><extropy-chat-bounces@lists.extropy.org></a> <b>On
Behalf Of </b>Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat<br>
<b>…</b></span><br>
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>…But against that is the decision to replace "...where
no man..." with "...where no one...". Again, no great
objection, at least it does make sense and doesn't sound
artificial, but it still tends to draw the attention to
these silly 'gender issues' that get people so riled up,
and it's unnecessary. There are more important things to
worry about. <u></u><u></u></p>
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<pre>-- <u></u><u></u></pre>
<pre>Ben<u></u><u></u></pre>
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>…Ja, that and they fixed the split infinitive by switching
to “to go boldly” replacing “to boldly go” tossing us grammar
nazis a bone. But it also makes us realize that eliminating
the split infinitive was not a real improvement. Picard’s
revised introduction still doesn’t eliminate the Columbus
problem. When I was first told Columbus discovered the
Americas, I knew that was false: there were already people
here, plenty of them. Where Picard went had “ones” already
there, the Vulcans, the beloved Feringi (I really relate to
them for some odd reason) the Klingons and so forth. <u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Better would have been “…to go boldly where
no earth-evolved human has gone before…” <u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">spike<u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
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Hm. Just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?<br>
<br>
The thing is, spike, "to go boldly" might be more gramatically
correct, but it lacks the resonance of "to boldly go". It just
sounds weaker. So I prefer the ungrammatical version, for its
dramatic effect.</div></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">I learned recently the whole split infinitive rule has no real basis, it was put forward as a recommendation by one guy taking inspiration from Latin, where such constructions are impossible, and it just has been repeated ever since:</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><a href="https://youtu.be/BccyQaNKXz8">https://youtu.be/BccyQaNKXz8</a></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">But it has no basis within the English language, and as you note, many sentences are weakened by adhering to this rule.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Jason </div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div> I expect this was why it was originally chosen (for
the dramatic effect, not my preference).<br>
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And this is where "man" works well, too: "To boldly go where no man
has gone before" = "To (dramatic emphasis) /boldly/ go where no
(gender-neutral, but species-specific, hu-)man has gone before".<br>
<br>
Re. discovering, you have to realise that probably very few of the
discoveries we have made throughout history have been correctly
assigned. We like neat stories about some lone genius making a
world-changing discovery, but it rarely happens like that. It takes
lots of time and lots of people. Then some chancer takes the credit.
Then there's the difficulty of properly defining "discovered". If I
point out that Leif Erikson discovered the americas hundreds of
years before Columbus, you'll point out that actually, some unknown
proto-asians discovered it, thousands of years before him. Then I'll
argue that some mammoths probably discovered the place, millions of
years before /that/. Then ...<br>
<br>
<pre cols="72">--
Ben</pre>
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