This came up at work today.

We agree not to refer to OR We agree to not refer to.

I think they are different but I can't quite put my finger on what the difference in meaning is.

Bingley

I've seen better examples. This one is a little hard to wrap around and the split infinitive sounds wrong. Dub Dub' aside, split infinitives should have a reason for being, either to avoid ambiguity or to avoid awkwardness. I can't think of a good example just right now but I'm sure something will come up.

The second one is more emphatic; more specific; more active. It takes more effort (specificity) to decide to not do something than it does to decide not to do it.

We agree not to refer to OR We agree to not refer to.

[…] the difference in meaning


For me, they are different because there is a sort of ghost-parsing or an echo of archaic usage in the first example: it could break down into
> We [agree not] [to refer] [to x]
which would render the meaning as “we don’t agree to refer to x”, in contrast to the clear and certain meaning of the second example (“we {positively} agree to not refer to x”)

English word order tends to prioritise important information to the head of the sentence. When you encounter a negative word in third place, the brain is trying to apply it to the preceding statement, hence leading to ambiguity.

By agreement, we choose to refer not.

>hence leading to ambiguity.

Ambiguity - the Devil's volleyball.

wnsftd.

Frankly, I don't think there's a meaningful difference between the two approaches. The only difference is in the eye of the beholder. I would read them both as being the same.