Temporary Archive: Suzanne Brockmann's Message Board

That it is a capricious rule set up in the Renaissance to try to get the English language to follow arbitrary rules of logic. Shakespeare and Chaucer both used double negatives and it was in fact widely used before a bunch of monks decided what should be "proper."

Like the split infinite. It's a stupid rule created because you cannot split an infinitive in Latin (it's one word not 2, like in English), and to make English more like Latin, proper grammar was established to never split an infinitive.

It's amazing to me how such arbitrary pointless rules are now taught as gospel in school.

And for the record. I'm a certified English teacher ;)