Mind your language | 22 November 2003

A query comes from Argyllshire: ‘What is the infinitive of can?’ The reference is not to canning peas. But before I forget, Harry Henry of Esher, who sounds a sport, reminds me, if I ever knew, that (as Max Beerbohm tells us in A Variety of Things) the original pattern for all publishing titles containing the word After was set by T. Fenning Dodsworth, with his article ‘The End of All Things — And After’. Since the fictitious Dodsworth’s name is a sort of apocopation of my own, I should not forget that.

Now, can. It does not have an infinitive because it is a modal verb, like may, must, shall and will, indicating the mood of another verb. This might not sound grippingly interesting, but two minutes with the learned Robert Burchfield’s New Fowler’s has explained an unscratched itch that has been troubling me for some time.

Many of us have noticed the difficulty that newspapers have in using might where they ought.