No, I’m not talking about a gymnastic split — but at my age, I probably should avoid that, too! What I’m talking about is splitting a verb and its modifier with a noun — usually the noun that is the object of the verb. Let me explain what I mean: we often use verbs and modifiers in our writing, such as “look over” or “go around.” In these two cases, we take a verb (“look” or “go”) and use a preposition (“over” or “around”) to modify, or enhance, the verb. The verb says what action is being done, and the preposition is acting as an adverb, explaining how or where the action is being done. (Sorry to get into so many grammatical terms; I’ll try to use them sparingly from here on.)

You often have to split these verb/preposition combinations by saying, “Let’s look this over,” or “She turned it around.” When single, simple words like “this” and “it” split them, it’s no problem. It’s not even a problem when you split them with two or three words: “Let’s look this contract over,” or “She turned the plastic bottle around.” The sentences are still understandable, though some writers might prefer to avoid the split, even when it’s just two or three words.

It’s when we split these noun/preposition combinations with a long noun phrase that things really start to get messy: “The president decided to give the plan to raise taxes on the middle class up.” Would it not be better to say “The president decided to give up the plan to raise taxes on the middle class“? Of course, there are other ways to do this. You could replace the verb and modifier with a single verb, saying, “The president decided to drop the plan to raise taxes on the middle class.” Or you could rephrase the whole sentence, such as, “The president decided that the plan to raise taxes on the middle class was not worth pursuing.”

Both of these alternatives avoid the use of the verb-modifier combo altogether, and that’s too bad, because it’s a legitimate grammatical construction — as long as you don’t split it too far apart. How far apart is too far? That’s for you to decide — you’re the writer!