Popular Culture
- The split infinitive, specifically its famous use in the Star Trek opening sequence, is the basis of a joke from Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: "In those days men were real men, women were real women, small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri. And all dared to brave unknown terrors, to do mighty deeds, to boldly split infinitives that no man had split before — and thus was the Empire forged."
- Split infinitives are an annoyance to Inspector Fowler (Rowan Atkinson), the main character of the British comedy series The Thin Blue Line. He corrects Constable Goodie for using the famous Star Trek split infinitive only to be chided by his son later in the episode for splitting one himself.
- Numerous P. G. Wodehouse characters show the tendency to split infinitives, and other characters, who pride themselves upon being purists, detest this. For example, in The Swoop!, the young hero says triumphantly to his prisoner—a German prince with excellent English—"it is when apparently crushed that the Briton is to more than ever be feared". Even in this dire situation, the prince insists that the protagonist has used bad grammar by splitting an infinitive and has thus spoiled his big speech.
Read more about this topic: Split Infinitive
Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, popular and/or culture:
“Like other secret lovers, many speak mockingly about popular culture to conceal their passion for it.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“The press is no substitute for institutions. It is like the beam of a searchlight that moves restlessly about, bringing one episode and then another out of darkness into vision. Men cannot do the work of the world by this light alone. They cannot govern society by episodes, incidents, and eruptions. It is only when they work by a steady light of their own, that the press, when it is turned upon them, reveals a situation intelligible enough for a popular decision.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“Here is this vast, savage, howling mother of ours, Nature, lying all around, with such beauty, and such affection for her children, as the leopard; and yet we are so early weaned from her breast to society, to that culture which is exclusively an interaction of man on man,—a sort of breeding in and in, which produces at most a merely English nobility, a civilization destined to have a speedy limit.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)