Can "never" be put inside an infinitive ("to never do")

Both are correct; you can choose which sounds better in the sentence - "never to do" may allow more emphasis on never (IMO), but "to never do" is probably more common.

To answer your questions directly:

'Never to do' is grammatically sound.
'To never do' is also grammatically sound. Splitting infinitives is fine.

Chris M

Posted 2014-03-02T09:57:49.527

Reputation: 524

According to https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=never+to+do%2C+to+never+do&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cnever%20to%20do%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cto%20never%20do%3B%2Cc0, today never to do is 10 times more popular than to never do in writing. Forty years ago it was 100 times more popular.

– Graduate – 2014-03-02T11:04:10.350

1Very interesting. In spoken English, I suspect 'to never do' is more common. Many people try to avoid splitting infinitives in writing, and you can choose to also, but there is no rule against it (in English), as snailplane rightly comments. – Chris M – 2014-03-02T11:16:19.653

Further reading: http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/grammar/splitinf.html

– snailplane – 2014-03-02T11:44:33.190

4There's nothing rigid about infinitive constructions. There is no rule against "splitting infinitives" in English. – snailplane – 2014-03-02T10:08:54.853

I am astonished (and gratified) that it has taken thirteen months for this question to be raised here. On ELU it took three weeks. – StoneyB on hiatus – 2014-03-02T12:05:04.387

Can "never" be put inside an infinitive ("to never do")

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