| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. |
A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English. 1996.
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Page 56
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| the examination offered to all applicants or ask for a personal interview. Similarly, you should say You may have either the ring or the bracelet but not You may either have the ring or the bracelet. | 1 |
not only … but also
| | As with other correlative conjunctions, you should follow each part of the not only … but also … construction with an element of the same grammatical type. Thus, instead of She not only bought a new car but also a new lawnmower, you should write She bought not only a new car but also a new lawnmower, because in this version both not only and but also are followed by noun phrases. | 2 |
| Leaving out the also from this construction tends to intensify the first part of the construction rather than supplement it: She is not only smart but brilliant. He not only wanted the diamond but wanted it desperately. | 3 |
rather than
| | The phrase rather than consists of an adverb and a conjunction and often means “and not,” as in I decided to skip lunch rather than eat in the cafeteria again. It is grammatically similar to sooner than in that it is used with a “bare” infinitive—an infinitive minus to: I would stay here and eat flies sooner than go with them. | 4 |
| Rather than can also be used with nouns as a compound preposition meaning “instead of”: I bought a mountain bike rather than a ten-speed. But some people object to this use, insisting that than should be used only as a conjunction. They therefore object to constructions in which rather than is followed by a gerund, as in Rather than buying a new car, I kept my old one. | 5 |
| In some cases, however, rather than can only be followed by a gerund and not by a bare infinitive. If the main verb of the sentence has a form that does not allow parallel treatment of the verb following rather than, you cannot use a bare infinitive, and you must use a gerund. This is often the case when the main verb is in a past tense or has a participle. Thus, you must say The results of the study, rather than ending (not end or ended) the controversy, only added to it. If the main verb was in the present tense (add), you could use the bare infinitive end. | 6 |
| Curiously, when the rather than construction follows the main verb, it can use other verb forms besides the bare infinitive. Thus you can say The results of the study added to the controversy rather than ended it. | 7 |
| The overriding concern in all of this should be to avoid faulty parallels, as in sentences like Rather than buy a new car, I have kept my old one and Rather than take a cab, she is going on foot. | 8 |
| Clearly, it is grammatically defensible to follow rather than with a gerund, but if you prefer to avoid the controversy, use instead of with gerunds. | 9 |
Passive Voice
| | Writing handbooks usually include warnings about the passive voice—it is wordy and clumsy and leads to static rather than dynamic writing. There is | 10 |
| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. Copyright © 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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