>
The phrase "to fully-preserve" is wrong for two reasons. The first is one
does not use a hyphen for a verb plus an object; the hyphen is used for
compound modifiers, compound nouns, etc. The second is that there is a
split infinitive--definitely a grammatical faux pas. A better way to
phrase "to fully-preserve" would be "to preserve (object of the verb)
completely".
>
Computer languages, including HTML, have different grammar rules than English.
I believe an HTML keyword has to be one word? So they could create
<fully-preserve> or <fullypreserve> but not <fully preserve> or
<preserve completely>. URLs and user names can't have embedded spaces, thus
while "Gloria Burd" is a valid name away from the Internet, it would not be
permissible as a user name. It would have to be something like gloriaburd,
possibly with . or _ or - in between, and then there are many ISPs that don't
allow more than eight characters in a user name. Unix and the Internet tend to
be partial to lower case letters.
According to my copy of the Random House Dictionary of the English Language,
dating to 1969, the notion that a split infinitive is a grammatical faux pas
derives from attempting to apply Latin grammar to English, but there is nothing
inherent in English grammar or style to support this notion. Different
languages have different word orders; I am most familiar with English, German
and French.
I must say this thread on John & Jane's grammar had me laughing.
