On splitting infinitives

From a letter from Raymond Chandler to the editor of the Atlantic Monthly:

By the way, would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in a sort of broken-down patois which is something like the way a Swiss waiter talks, and that when I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split, and when I interrupt the velvety smoothness of my more or less literate syntax with a few sudden words of barroom vernacular, this is done with the eyes wide open and the mind relaxed but attentive. The method may not be perfect, but it is all I have. I think your proofreader is kindly attempting to steady me on my feet, but much as I appreciate the solicitude, I am really able to steer a fairly clear course, provided I get both sidewalks and the street between.

Copy-editors (which is what Chandler meant when he said ‘proofreader’) really do need to develop a sensitivity to their author’s prose style. Their job (or, at least, an important part of it) is to polish the manuscript so that the author is shown at their best not reduce the text to some imagined standard English.