Hooray Dan Coleman for a lively, concise and well-presented discussion about useful aspects of grammar. Look forward to reading more postings.

In the last sentence, you went too far to make your point: to my ears, "...a world in which such pedantry has no place." simply sounds better.

A split infinitive is like fingernails scraping on a blackboard. A dangling participle is an affront to the English language. So I was instructed in 1939 by a teacher who loved the language, up with whose words of ancient wisdom I will continue to put.

Entertaining and instructive.

Until someone can persuade the College Board to agree, we're still going to have to teach all three rules in school. Each one is represented regularly on the usage section of the verbal portion of the S.A.T. and probably on the MCAS as well. This fact may give folks some inkling of the ways in which these tests are a terrible waste of time. Retired English Teacher

Who died and made you God of our language?

He's just giving you the historical facts. Sorry, there is no god of language, and never was.

Essentiall reading. These aren't rules, they're superstitions. Rules of language exist to facilitate effective communication, not to be self-perpetuating ideals of "correct" language that clear writing must subordinate itself to.

As a middle school English teacher, I take offense with the implication that teachers are to blame for the writer's unpleasant grammar usage experiences. There have been many articles and columns, published by journalists in fact, that perpetuate some of the same ideas about grammer discussed in the column. In fact, the writer should actually come into a modern classroom where he would discover that grammar is not taught the way it once was. Does the unfounded teacher bashing ever end?

Some people prefer to avoid adverbs whenever possible, thereby also avoiding the split infinitive. If you are about to use an adverb, ask yourself whether it adds meaning or emphasis, or whether it just clutters the sentence. In the article's example, "The teacher wanted to flatly forbid singing," would it really be less emphatic to write, "The teacher wanted to forbid singing," or "The teacher wanted to prohibit singing"? Or an even stronger verb? But I agree: "to boldly go" has a nice ring to it.

An issue of usage.  People don't sing flatly.  Their singing is flat.