more on nonsense

I have just re-read the last post I made, and realised something even more ridiculous about how it is the Guardian ended up printing the borderline-ungrammatical "...then properly to support them...". This can only have been produced by someone so desperate to avoid a 'split infinitive' that they temporarily suspended all judgement about what constitutes good writing, and in doing so, chose the worst of all available options. Consider the following possibilities for adverb placement; I have supplied my considered linguistic opinion for each.

(1) ...then to properly support them... [absolutely fine]
(2) ...then to support them properly... [absolutely fine]
(3) ...then properly to support them... [the terrorists win]

Variant (3), the word order actually used, can only be an incompetent correction of (1). Faced with "properly" in between "to" and "support" (1), someone panicked moved it out of there. But instead of changing it to the perfectly good variant (2), which would have pleased everyone -- because it sounds fine, and does not violate the non-rule against split infinitives --, they managed to make just about the wost possible choice in (3).