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And which pedant decided that it was a heinous offence to split an infinitive?

And don't get me going on it's used as a pronoun.

Or rap music while I'm at it.

kenhiggs

I think it was possibly 19th (18th?) century grammarians who noted that it was impossible to split an infinitive in Latin (and other Romance languages) as it was one word, so decided it shouldn't be permissable in English either. I don't think many of us still pay attention to them.

I don't understand your second point. "It" is surely a pronoun? "It's" is "it is", naturally (though it is often confused with "its" - belonging to it).

The C in rap is, of course, silent.

Hi, chrise. I just meant that "ITS" is a third person possessive pronoun and "IT'S" is a contraction of "IT IS". I think that we are in agreement!!

Bit of a thread-revival.
Rosalind's post made me smile as it reminded me of Harry Hill making fun of Line of Duty- some of the actors referred to the mysterious "Aitch" and some were saying "Haitch"- it made it impossible to take the show seriously;
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000mmc8/harry-hills-world-of-tv-series-1-4-police-dramas